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Re: [ox-en] One early card WAS A CRIStmas Carol



On 24/12/03 I hacked:

<snip>

[5] "Alfred Wallace returned from the tropics, as Darwin had done, convinced that related species diverge from a common stock, and nonplussed as to why they diverged. What Wallace did not know was that Darwin had hit on the explanation two years after he returned to England from his voyage in the *Beagle*. Darwin recounts that in 1838 he was reading the *Essay on Population* by the Reverend Thomas Malthus ('for amusement', says Darwin, meaning that it was not part of his serious reading) and he was struck by the thought in Malthus. Malthus had said that population multiplies faster than food. If that is true of animals, then they must compete to survive: so that nature acts as a selective force, killing of the weak, and forming new species from the survivors who are fitted to their environment.

'Here then I had at last a theory by which to work,' says Darwin. And you would have think that a man who said that would set to work, write papers, go out and lecture. Nothing of the kind. For four years Darwin did not even commit the theory to paper. Only in 1842 he wrote a draft of thirty five pages, in pencil; and two years later expanded it to two hundred and thirty five pages, in ink. And the draft he deposited with a sum of money and instructions to his wife to publish if he died." J.Bronowski - The Ascent of Man

</snip>

There is an Indian village; all around,
The Dark, eternal, boundless forest spreads
Its varied foliage.

Here I dwelt a while, the one white man
Among perhaps two hundred living souls.

Each day some labour calls them. Now they go
To fell the forest's pride, or in a canoe
With hook, and spear, and arrow, to catch fish;

A palm-tree's spreading leaves supply a thatch
Impervious to the winter's storms and rain.

The women dig the mandiocca root,
And with much labour make of it their bread.

And all each morn and eve wash in the stream,
And sport like mermaids in the sparkling wave.

The children of small growth are naked, and
The boys and men wear but a narrow cloth.
How I delight to see those naked boys !
Their well-form'd limbs, their bright, smooth, red-brown skin,
And every motion full of grace and health;
And as they run, and race, and shout, and leap,
Or swim and dive beneath the rapid stream,

I pity English boys; their active limbs
Cramp'd and confined in tightly-fitting clothes;

But how much more I pity English maids,
Their waist, and chest, and bosom all confined
By the vile torturing instruments they called stays !

I'd be an Indian here, and live content
To fish, and hunt, and paddle my canoe,
And see my children grow, like young fawns,
In health of body and in peace of mind,
Rich without wealth, and happy without gold !

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
Narrative of the Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro

http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/fem.htm#theory
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=dimorphism+human&btnG=Google+Search

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