1 66 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



self-advantage according to circumstances — in such 

 immense waste of primary and youthful life those 

 only come to maturity from the strict ordeal by 

 which Nature tests their adaptation to her standard 

 of perfection and fitness to continue their kind by 

 reproduction " (pp. 384, 385). 



While speaking of difficulty in understanding 

 some passages in Mr. Matthew's appendix, Darwin 

 says that " the full force of the principle of natural 

 selection " is there, and, in referring to it in a letter 

 to Lyell, he adds that " one may be excused in not 

 having discovered the fact in a work on Naval 

 Timber!" 



Five years after this, another pre-Darwinian was 

 unearthed, and, like Patrick Matthew, in unsuspected 

 company. Dr. W. C. Wells read a paper before the 

 Royal Society in 1813 on a White Female Part of 

 whose Skin resembles that of a Negro, but this was 

 not published till 1818, when it formed part of a 

 volume including the author's famous Two Essays 

 upon Dew and Single Vision. In his Historical 

 Sketch Darwin says that Wells " distinctly recog- 

 nises the principle of natural selection, and this is 

 the first recognition which has been indicated; but 

 he applies it only to the races of man, and to certain 

 characters alone. ... Of the accidental varieties of 

 man, which would occur among the first few and 

 scattered inhabitants of the middle regions of Africa, 

 some one would be better fitted than the others to 

 bear the diseases of the country. This race would 



