assume that they vary together, but we are warranted in asserting that they can have no tendency to vary together. And what are the implications in cases where increase of a structure can be of no service unless there is concomitant increase in many distant structures, which have to join it in performing the action for which it is useful?
As far back as 1804 (Principles of Biology, § 166) I named in illustration an animal carrying heavy horns—the extinct Irish elk; and indicated the many changes in bones, muscles, blood-vessels, nerves, composing the fore-part of the body, which would be required to make an increment of size in such horns advantageous. Here let me take another instance—that of the giraffe: an instance which I take partly because, in the sixth edition of the Origin of Species, issued in 1872, Mr. Darwin has referred to this animal when effectually disposing of certain arguments urged against his hypothesis. He there says:
And in the summary of the chapter, he remarks concerning the adjustments in the same quadruped, that "the prolonged use of all the parts together with inheritance will have aided in an important manner in their co-ordination" (p. 199): a remark probably having reference chiefly to the increased massiveness of the lower part of the neck; the increased size and strength of the thorax required to bear the additional burden; and the increased strength of the fore-legs required to carry the greater weight of both. But now I think that further consideration suggests the belief that the entailed modifications are much more numerous and remote than at first appears; and that the greater part of these are such as cannot be ascribed in any degree to the selection of favorable variations, but must be ascribed exclusively to the inherited effects of changed functions. Whoever has seen a giraffe gallop will long remember the sight as a ludicrous one. The reason for the strangeness of the motions is obvious. Though the fore-limbs and the hind-limbs differ so much in length, yet in galloping they have to keep pace—must take equal strides. The result is that at each stride, the angle which the hind-limbs describe round their centre of motion is much larger than the angle described by the fore-limbs. And beyond this, as an aid in equalizing the strides, the hind part of the back is at each stride bent very much downward and forward. Hence the hind-quarters appear to be doing nearly all the work. Now a moment's observation shows that the bones and muscles composing the hind-quarters of the giraffe, perform actions differing in one or other way and degree, from the actions performed by the homologous bones and muscles in a mammal of ordinary proportions,
