106 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



and of "the sui-vival of the fittest"), it seems so very natural, 

 it is Mai thus all over, and it is so desirable, that it seemed to 

 a practical Englishman almost a natural necessity. But let 

 us see how it is. Do we find that only the strong beget 

 families ? Do we find that the children of apparently weak 

 parents are always weaker than their parents ? or that they 

 are unfit to survive ? I do not think that human experience 

 goes that way. I do not think that in nature, under the 

 broadest possible field of observation, we see anything like it. 

 Let us observe, for instance, such plants as have a wide dis- 

 tribution. Let us observe them at the foot of a mountain 

 range. • We see, for instance, that our pine-trees at the foot 

 of the White Mountains are stately, large trees. At a certain 

 height upon the slope of the hill they are smaller ; near the 

 summit they are stunted shrubbery ; and yet that stunted 

 shrubbery has been in existence near the top of the mountains, 

 ever since pines have been growing on the sides of the White 

 Mountains, and they have propagated and multiplied in that 

 condition just as well as the stately trees in the valley. It is 

 a stunted, creeping sort of existence, but they have survived, 

 and have had as long an existence as the strongest and largest 

 in the lower part of the country. It is, therefore, sometimes 

 a law of nature, that the weakest and apparently least fit are 

 those that survive, as well as the strongest. Nature tells us, in 

 that case, — and the cases might be multiplied, — that there is 

 some reason why the weak may suiwive as well as the strong ; 

 some reason why those who to us appear less fitted, have as 

 good a hold on life as those which appear to us more fitted. 

 Why that should be we do not know, and it is probably be- 

 cause of our io^norance in this matter that there are those who 

 deem that " natural selection " is the law of nature, and others 

 who do not believe that the theory of " natural selection " has 

 any value at all. 



I do not mean to argue the question to its very bottom, 

 and to consider the question of inheritance with reference to 

 the origination of species, and all that. I meant only to make 

 a few remarks in order to testify my dissent, a complete and 

 radical dissent, from the views of Darwin, and to lead prob- 

 ably to a further discussion. 



Mr. Lewis. You notified us, ]\Ir. Chairman, that we were 



