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CHAPTER I 



THE COMING OF THE DARWINIAN THEORY 

 OF NATURAL SELECTION 



J\s a recent product of evolution, man must have arrived upon 

 the scene to find himself in a world that was already well pro- 

 vided with animals and with plants. Some animals would be 

 actively hostile and dangerous to him, some would be afraid of 

 him, some would be indifferent; some plants would be poisonous, 

 some good to eat or to provide useful materials, some indifferent. 

 Man would presumably inherit some notion of what to eat, and 

 how to obtain it, but it is clear that in his early days the struggle 

 for existence must have been severe, especially if one remembers 

 the prolonged infancy and helplessness of his offspring. He 

 probably had greater brain power, and may have had some 

 leanings towards co-operation, otherwise chiefly showTi by insects. 

 Whilst failure in the struggle for existence at the very beginning 

 would probably have meant his complete extermination, the risk 

 would lessen as he established himself in various different places 

 removed from that in which he probably began. It is an intriguing 

 thought that he may owe his first survival to having arisen in 

 some place not troubled by dangerous animals, or to some other 

 stroke of what seems like mere luck. 



From verv earlv times he must have been struck by the bodily 

 likenesses of many of the organisms by which he was surrounded. 

 He would soon recognise the difference between the male and the 

 female of the same species, and he would distinguish, for example, 

 between the tiger, the leopard, and the cat, or between the wolf, 

 the fox, and the dog. He would see the evident likenesses that 

 run through these triads, and that it was greater between tiger 

 and cat than between tiger and dog. He would see other like- 

 nesses between goose, duck, and swan, between owl, eagle and 

 hawk, or yet again between lizard, snake, and crocodile. But he 

 would also notice that there were overriding distinctions among 

 these various animals — that both the cat group and the dog 

 group could be included in a greater group that we now call the 

 Mammals, the eagle group and the duck group in the greater 

 group of Birds, and so on. Thus there would grow up the notion 

 of groups within groups, which is the essence of all classification. 



WED I 



