PDF - Wallace Online

in PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCES AMONG ANIMALS 35which itbrought to light and made use of. The series ofNatural History volumes in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopcedia, inwhich Mr. Swainson developed it in most departments of theanimal kingdom, made it widely known and in fact for a;long time these were the best and almost the only populartext-books for the rising generation of naturalists. It wasfavourably received too by the older school, which was perhapsrather an indication of its unsoundness. A considerablenumber of well-known naturalists either spoke approvingly ofit, or advocated similar principles, and for a good many yearsit was decidedly in the ascendant. With such a favourableintroduction, and with such talented exponents, it must havebecome established if it had had any germ of truth in it ;yet it quite died out in a few short years its ; very existenceis now a matter of history ;and so rapid was its fall thatits talented creator, Swainson, perhaps lived to be the lastman who believed in it.Such is the course of a false theory. That of a true oneis very different, as may be well seen by the progress ofopinion on the subject of Natural Selection. In less thaneight years The Origin of Species has produced convictionin the minds of a majority of the most eminent living menof science. New facts, new problems, new difficulties as theyarise are accepted, solved, or removed by this theory and its;principles are illustrated by the progress and conclusions ofevery well established branch of human knowledge. It is theobject of the present chapter to show how it has recently beenapplied to connect together and explain a variety of curiousfacts which had long been considered as inexplicable anomalies.of the Principle of UtilityPerhaps no principle has ever been announced so fertile inresults as that which Mr. Darwin so earnestly impresses uponus, and which is indeed a necessary deduction from thetheory of Natural Selection, namely that none of thedefinite facts or organic nature, no special organ, no characteristicform of marking, no peculiarities of instinct or ofhabit, no relations between species or between groups ofspecies can exist, but which must now be or once have beenuseful to the individuals or the races which possess them.