se essays. Only a very brief outline must
suffice to convey some of the most important points.

In the childhood of the human race, he believed, Natural Selection would
operate mainly on man's body, but in later periods upon the mind. Hence
it would happen that the physical forms of the different races were
early fixed in a permanent manner. Sharper claws, stronger muscles,
swifter feet and tougher hides determine the survival value of lower
animals. With man, however, the finer intellect, the readier
adaptability to environment, the greater susceptibility to improvement,
and the elastic capacity for co-ordination, were the qualities which
determined his career. Tribes which are weak in these qualities give way
and perish before tribes which are strong in them, whatever advantages
the former may possess in physical structure. The finest savage has
always succumbed before the advance of civilisation. "The Red Indian
goes down before the white man, and the New Zealander vanishes in
presence of the English settler." Nature, careless in this stage of
evolution about the body, selects for survival those varieties of
mankind which excel in mental qualities. Hence it has happened that the
physical characteristics of the different races, once fixed in very
early prehistoric times, have never greatly varied. They have passed out
of the range of Natural Selection because they have become comparatively
unimportant in the struggle for existence.

After going into considerable detail of organic and physical
development, he says: "The inference I would draw from this class of
phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of
man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose, just as man
guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms." Thus he
foreshadows the conclusion, to be more fully developed in "The World of
Life" (1910), of an over-ruling God, of the spiritual nature of man, and
of the other world of spiritual beings.

An essay that excited special attention was that on Mimicry. The two on
Birds' Nests brought forth some rather heated correspondence from
amateur naturalists, to which Wallace replied either by adducing
confirmation of the facts stated, or by thanking them for the
information they had given him.

With reference to the paper on Mimicry, it is interesting to note that
the hypothesis therein adopted was first suggested by H.W. Bates,
Wallace's friend and fellow-traveller in