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The Descent of Man

The Descent of Man

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cated, which implies the power <strong>of</strong> their breeding<br />

freely when first captured, and one chief<br />

check to wild men, when brought into contact<br />

with civilisation, surviving to form a civilised<br />

race, is the same, namely, sterility from changed<br />

conditions <strong>of</strong> life.<br />

Finally, although the gradual decrease and ultimate<br />

extinction <strong>of</strong> the races <strong>of</strong> man is a highly<br />

complex problem, depending on many causes<br />

which differ in different places and at different<br />

times; it is the same problem as that presented<br />

by the extinction <strong>of</strong> one <strong>of</strong> the higher animals—<br />

<strong>of</strong> the fossil horse, for instance, which disappeared<br />

from South America, soon afterwards to<br />

be replaced, within the same districts, by countless<br />

troups <strong>of</strong> the Spanish horse. <strong>The</strong> New Zealander<br />

seems conscious <strong>of</strong> this parallelism, for<br />

he compares his future fate with that <strong>of</strong> the<br />

native rat now almost exterminated by the European<br />

rat. Though the difficulty is great to our<br />

imagination, and really great, if we wish to as-

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