CH. xiii] D. CxEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 143 



which one species won at the expense of another in the struggle 

 for existence, one ought to find many cases of this internecine 

 struggle going on in many places, but one does not. One only 

 finds a struggle between individuals, in one place a member of 

 species A being successful, in another a member of B. 



The supporters of selection say that the intermediates, which 

 also came into the competition, have been killed out, and that the 

 two survivors are now adapted to slightly different conditions. 

 This is of course possible, but it is a very remarkable thing, 

 when one thinks of all these processes going on gradually, as must 

 be the case under the old theory, that one does not find inter- 

 mediates in the fossil deposits. What are sometimes called inter- 

 mediates are really a very different thing, usually plants with 

 some of the characters of one, some of another, really a very good 

 argument for differentiation. And further, why does one not 

 find intermediates at the present date? Is the competition now 

 finished? One would expect to find some cases in which it was 

 still going on. We have already seen that in a great number of 

 cases, especially in those high in the scheme of classification, inter- 

 mediates between the characters are actually impossible, and 

 how mutation, crossing the whole gap between the two at one 

 operation, is the only probable explanation. It is no argument in 

 favour of this supposition, that species can act as units, to say 

 that masses of men of (to some extent) the same race, like the 

 Fijians or the Hawaiians, can act together as units. Man has 

 sufficient intelligence to be able to combine to some slight extent, 

 though it is a somewhat ironical commentary upon that intelli- 

 gence that his chief and most efficient combination is for the 

 purpose of making war, whose results are more against natural 

 selection than for it. 



The new and better adapted form was supposed to kill out the 

 less well-adapted parent. But as they would usually meet only at 

 the edges of their respective territories (p. 13), where they 

 would tend to cross, and to lose their identity, it would require 

 a vast amount of time for the new one to invade the territory of 

 the unimproved parent, and to kill it out entirely. Almost cer- 

 tainly examples of the old species would be left in many different 

 spots, where they had been overlooked, a feature which in actual 

 fact is very rarely seen. 



Incidentally, the new species would have to kill out all the 

 hybrids at the meeting place of the new and the old, and if it 

 had not crossed the "sterility line" it would continue to make 



