one advantage, but by the union of all, great and small.

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