"[19]

Now the conservation of minute variations in many instances is, of course,
plain and intelligible enough; such, _e.g._, as those which tend to promote
the destructive faculties of beasts of prey on the one hand, or to
facilitate the flight or concealment of the animals pursued on the other;
provided always that these minute beginnings are of such a kind as really
to have a certain efficiency, however small, in favour of the conservation
of the individual possessing them; and also provided that no unfavourable
peculiarity in any other direction accompanies and neutralizes, in the
struggle for life, the minute favourable variation.

But some of the cases which have been brought forward, and which have met
with very general acceptance, seem less satisfactory when carefully
analysed than they at first appear to be. Amongst these we may mention "the
neck of the giraffe."

At first sight it would seem as though a better example in support of
"Natural Selection" could hardly have been chosen. Let the fact of the {25}
occurrence of occasional, severe droughts in the country which that animal
has inhabited be granted. In that case, when the ground vegetation has been
consumed, and the trees alone remain, it is plain that at such times only
those individuals (of what we assume to be the nascent giraffe species)
which were able to reach high up would be preserved, and would become the
parents of the following generation, some individuals of which would, of
course, inherit that high-reaching power which alone preserved their
parents. Only the high-reaching issue of these high-reaching individuals
would again, _caeteris paribus_, be preserved at the next drought, and would
again transmit to their offspring their still loftier stature; and so on,
from period to period, through aeons of time, all the individuals tending to
revert to the ancient shorter type of body, being ruthlessly destroyed at
the occurrence of each drought.

(1.) But against this it may be said, in the first place, that the argument
proves too much; for, on this supposition, many species must have tended to
undergo a similar modification, and we ought to have at least several
forms, similar to the giraffe, developed from different Ungulata.[20] A
careful observer of animal life, who has long resided in South Africa,
explored the interior, and lived in the giraffe country, has assured the
Author that the giraffe has powers of locomotion and endurance fully