XVI PREFACE. 



Darwin's pigeons in the course of a few generations 

 are nothing to the purpose — nothing to the purpose 

 certainly, if the three or four thousand years com- 

 prised in Egyptian records cannot be admitted as a 

 sufficiently long time for the manifestation of evolu- 

 tionary changes. 



I have above alluded to applications which may 

 be logically enough made of the general idea of 

 Natural Selection in illustration of various processes, 

 and commented on the illogical reasoning which 

 would appeal to such instances as tests in proof of 

 the soundness of the idea of Natural Selection in its 

 application to the alleged Evolution of organised 

 beings. An example of such a mistake is presented 

 in the title of Schleicher's work : ' Darwinism tested 

 by the Science of Language.' The production of 

 language, however, to quote from Professor Dwight 

 Whitney, of Yale College, U.S., had nothing to do 

 as a cause with the development of man out of any 

 other or lower race. The only development in which 

 language was concerned is the historic development 

 of man's faculties. Language, therefore, in its be- 

 ginnings, can be considered only as connected with 

 the history of man as man — not with any alleged 

 evolution from apes, as Mr. Darwin argues. 



Mr. Huxley, assuming that the Doctrine of 

 Evolution cannot be gainsaid, observes : 'If the 

 evolution of all living forms, by gradual modification, 



