The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th EditionDarwin, Charles
History
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology); Natural selection
Mr. Mivart then asks (and this is his second objection), if natural
selection be so potent, and if high browsing be so great an advantage,
why has not any other hoofed quadruped acquired a long neck and lofty
stature, besides the giraffe, and, in a lesser degree, the camel,
guanaco and macrauchenia? Or, again, why has not any member of the
group acquired a long proboscis? With respect to South Africa, which
was formerly inhabited by numerous herds of the giraffe, the answer is
not difficult, and can best be given by an illustration. In every
meadow in England, in which trees grow, we see the lower branches
trimmed or planed to an exact level by the browsing of the horses or
cattle; and what advantage would it be, for instance, to sheep, if kept
there, to acquire slightly longer necks? In every district some one
kind of animal will almost certainly be able to browse higher than the
others; and it is almost equally certain that this one kind alone could
have its neck elongated for this purpose, through natural selection and
the effects of increased use. In South Africa the competition for
browsing on the higher branches of the acacias and other trees must be
between giraffe and giraffe, and not with the other ungulate animals.
Why, in other quarters of the world, various animals belonging to this
same order have not acquired either an elongated neck or a proboscis,
cannot be distinctly answered; but it is as unreasonable to expect a
distinct answer to such a question as why some event in the history of
mankind did not occur in one country while it did in another. We are
ignorant with respect to the conditions which determine the numbers and
range of each species, and we cannot even conjecture what changes of
structure would be favourable to its increase in some new country. We
can, however, see in a general manner that various causes might have
interfered with the development of a long neck or proboscis. To reach
the foliage at a considerable height (without climbing, for which
hoofed animals are singularly ill-constructed) implies greatly
increased bulk of body; and we know that some areas support singularly
few large quadrupeds, for instance South America, though it is so
luxuriant, while South Africa abounds with them to an unparalleled
degree. Why this should be so we do not know; nor why the later
tertiary periods should have been much more favourable for their
existence than the present time. Whatever the causes may have been, we
can see that certain districts and times would have been much more
favourable than others for the development of so large a quadruped as
the giraffe.
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