x COLOURS AND ORNAMENTS CHARACTERISTIC OF SEX 295 
as being due to the general laws of growth and develop¬ 
ment, and make it unnecessary to call to our aid so hypo¬ 
thetical a cause as the cumulative action of female prefer¬ 
ence. There remains, however, a general argument, arising 
from the action of natural selection itself, which renders it 
almost inconceivable that female preference could have been 
effective in the way suggested; while the same argument 
strongly supports the view here set forth. Natural selec¬ 
tion, as we have seen in our earlier chapters, acts per¬ 
petually and on an enormous scale in weeding out the 
“ unfit ” at every stage of existence, and preserving only 
those which are in all respects the very best. Each year, only 
a small percentage of young birds survive to take the place of 
the old birds which die ; and the survivors will be those which 
are best able to maintain existence from the egg onwards, an 
important factor being that their parents should be well able 
to feed and protect them, while they themselves must in turn 
lie equally able to feed and protect their own offspring. Now 
this extremely rigid action of natural selection must render 
any attempt to select mere ornament utterly nugatory, unless 
the most ornamented always coincide with “ the fittest ” in 
every other respect; while, if they do so coincide, then any 
selection of ornament is altogether superfluous. If the most 
brightly coloured and fullest plumaged males are not the most 
healthy and vigorous, have not the best instincts for the proper 
construction and concealment of the nest, and for the care 
and protection of the young, they are certainly not the fittest, 
and will not survive, or be the parents of survivors. If, on 
the other hand, there is generally this correlation—if, as has 
been here argued, ornament is the natural product and direct 
outcome of superabundant health and vigour, then no other 
mode of selection is needed to account for the presence of 
such ornament.' The action of natural selection does not 
indeed disprove the existence of female selection of ornament 
as ornament, but it renders it entirely ineffective ; and as 
the direct evidence for any such female selection is almost 
nil, while the objections to it are certainly weighty, there can 
lie no longer any reason for upholding a theory which was 
provisionally useful in calling attention to a most curious and 
suggestive body of facts, but which is now no longer tenable. 
