Max Brand

“ For instance, in this mountain-desert there has, for several generations, been a pressure of environment calling for a species of man which will be able to live with comparative comfort in a waste region—a man, in a word, equipped with such powerful organisms that he will be as much at home in the heart of the desert as an ordinary man would be in a drawing-room. ”

“ Season by season and year by year, environment affects the individual; yet these gradual changes are extremely slow. Between steps of noticeable change there elapse periods many times longer than the life of historic man. All speed in changes such as these comes in what we call 'sports'. That is, a particular plant, for instance, gradually tends to have fewer leaves and a thicker bark, but the change is slight from age to age until suddenly a single instance occurs of plant which realises suddenly in a single step the 'ideal' towards which the species has been striving. ”

“ Those colours of wall and carpet, once brighter than spring, showed now as faded and lifeless as foliage in the dead days of late November when the leaves have no life except what keeps them clinging to the twig, and when their fallen fellows are lifted and rustled on the ground by every faint wind, with a sound like breathing in the forest. ”