80 



JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XV. 



SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE FAUNA OF CEYLON 

 OF WALLACE'S THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION. 



By A. Haly, Director of the Colombo Museum. 



Lord Salisbury, in his address to the British Association 

 at Oxford in 1894, said :—■ 



In Natural Selection what is to supply the breeder's place ? There 

 would be nothing but mere chance to secure that the advantageously 

 varied bridegroom at one end of the wood should meet the bride, 

 who, by happy contingency, had been advantageously varied in the 

 same direction at the same time at the other end of the wood. It 

 would be a mere chance if they ever knew of each other's existence. 

 A still more unlikely chance that they should resist on both sides all 

 temptation to a less advantageous alliance. But, unless they did so, 

 the new breed would never even begin, let alone the question of its 

 perpetuation after it had begun. 



Last September Professor E. B. Poulton pointed out in 

 his address to the Zoological Section of the British Association 

 at Liverpool that — 



the theory of Natural Selction, as held by Darwin and Wallace, 

 was misconceived by Lord Salisbury, and that the minute differences 

 which separate individuals are more important than Lord Salisbury's 

 advantageously varied bridge and bridegroom. 



I cannot imagine that Lord Salisbury can have ever 

 seriously studied Wallace on Darwinism, in which the great 

 Professor so nobly fights for the all-sufficiency of Natural 

 Selection as the originator of species — a work bristling with 

 instances of what I may call " Wallacian Woods." A wood 

 filled with a species of little bird, the individuals of 

 which vary so much on the north and south sides that a 

 naturalist, knowing only individuals from the extreme north 



