rict and arbitrary limits.
There is no indication of a tendency to continued divergence from
certain attributes with which the elephant was originally endued--no
ground whatever for anticipating that, in thousands of centuries, any
material alteration could ever be effected. All that we can infer from
analogy is, that some more useful and peculiar races might probably be
formed, if the experiment were fairly tried; and that some individual
characteristic, now only casual and temporary, might be perpetuated by
generation.

In all cases, therefore, where the domestic qualities exist in animals,
they seem to require no lengthened process for their developement; and
they appear to have been wholly denied to some classes, which, from
their strength and social disposition, might have rendered great
services to man; as, for example, the greater part of the quadrumana.
The orang-outang, indeed, which, for its resemblance in form to man, and
apparently for no other good reason, has been assumed by Lamarck to be
the most perfect of the inferior animals, has been tamed by the savages
of Borneo, and made to climb lofty trees, and to bring down the fruit.
But he is said to yield to his masters an unwilling obedience, and to be
held in subjection only by severe discipline. We know nothing of the
faculties of this animal which can suggest the idea that it rivals the
elephant in intelligence; much less anything which can countenance the
dreams of those who have fancied that it might have been transmuted into
the "dominant race." One of the baboons of Sumatra (_Simia carpolegus_)
appears to be more docile, and is frequently trained by the inhabitants
to ascend trees, for the purpose of gathering cocoa-nuts; a service in
which the animal is very expert. He selects, says Sir Stamford Raffles,
the ripe nuts, with great judgment, and pulls no more than he is
ordered.[825] The capuchin and cacajao monkeys are, according to
Humboldt, taught to ascend trees in the same manner, and to throw down
fruit on the banks of the lower Orinoco.[826]

It is for the Lamarckians to explain how it happens that those same
savages of Borneo have not themselves acquired, by dint of longing, for
many generations, for the power of climbing trees, the elongated arms of
the ourang, or even the prehensile tails of some American monkeys:
Instead of being reduced to the necessity of subjugating stubborn and
untractable brutes, we should naturally have anticipated "t