CH. I] OF NATURAL SELECTION 3 



that such groups might owe their origin and their likeness to 

 descent from some common parent, accompanied by such modi- 

 fication in different directions that there would arise forms like 

 the wolf and the dog, or the apple and the pear, showing an 

 obvious family resemblance though differing in detail. But 

 owing to the lack of any mechanism that seemed in any way 

 capable of bringing it about, this idea of "evolution" was not 

 seriously taken up, except by a few like Lamarck and St Hilaire, 

 and never became what one may term practical politics until the 

 coming in 1859 of Charles Darwin's famous book ^'The Origin of 

 Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of 

 Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", preceded, on 1 July 

 1858, by a joint paper by Darwin and by Alfred Russel Wallace, 

 an independent discoverer, read at the Linnean Society. Both 

 writers had been more or less inspired by reading Malthus (30) 

 to realise the struggle for existence that must always be going on 

 wherever living beings occur, a struggle which becomes the 

 fiercer the more that thev are crowded together, as for instance 

 at the birth of young, or of germination of seeds, for it is well 

 known that both animals and plants tend to produce more off- 

 spring than there is room for. Though by the aid of wind, water, 

 animals, etc. the seed may be scattered to some extent, the chief 

 crowd will always tend to be near together, and the great struggle 

 will be among the seedlings, rather than between them and the 

 parent, against which they will usually have but little chance. 

 As there will generallv be too manv seedlincrs for the available 

 space, the struggle will be severe, even if the competitors be 

 connected with the parent by an offshoot or runner. The survivors 

 will largely be chosen by chance, for early arrival on the spot, a 

 less shady or better watered position, a better or softer patch of 

 soil, and so on, will all be of greater advantage to the young 

 seedling than any advantage that it may carry in itself as com- 

 pared with its competitors of the same species, just as in the 

 human struggle for existence parental advantage, the right school 

 tie, etc. are of value. If it finds itself late in germination, upon 

 poor soil, in a place with insufficient water, and so on, natural 

 selection or competition will kill it out, inasmuch as it is unsuited 

 to the conditions with which it has met, even though it may be 

 suited well enough to what one may call the normal conditions of 

 the place. It may also be killed out if it be the offspring of parents 

 that have been used to somewhat different conditions, for it will 

 probably carry with it their suitability to conditions. The more 



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