" {23}
"Which occurred" is evidently "which happened to occur" by some
chance or accident unconnected with use and disuse. The word
"accident" is never used, but Mr. Wallace must be credited with this
instance of a desire to give his readers a chance of perceiving that
according to his distinctive feature evolution is an affair of luck,
rather than of cunning. Whether his readers actually did understand
this as clearly as Mr. Wallace doubtless desired that they should,
and whether greater development at this point would not have helped
them to fuller apprehension, we need not now inquire. What was
gained in distinctness might have been lost in distinctiveness, and
after all he did technically put us upon our guard.
Nevertheless he too at a pinch takes refuge in Lamarckism. In
relation to the manner in which the eyes of soles, turbots, and
other flat-fish travel round the head so as to become in the end
unsymmetrically placed, he says:-
"The eyes of these fish are curiously distorted in order that both
eyes may be upon the upper side, where alone they would be of any
use. . . . Now if we suppose this process, which in the young is
completed in a few days or weeks, to have been spread over thousands
of generations during the development of these fish, those usually
surviving WHOSE EYES RETAINED MORE AND MORE OF THE POSITION INTO
WHICH THE YOUNG FISH TRIED TO TWIST THEM [italics mine], the change
becomes intelligible.
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