THE INADEQUACY OF "NATURAL SELECTION:' 807 



individual having it in an unusual degree is more likely than 

 others to survive, and, among descendants, to leave some similarly 

 endowed or more endowed, who again transmit the variation 

 with, in some cases, increase. Clearly this highly useful power 

 may be developed by natural selection. So also, for like reasons, 

 may quickness of vision and delicacy of hearing. Though it may 

 be remarked in passing that since this extra sense-endowment, 

 serving to give early alarm, profits the herd as a whole, which 

 takes the alarm from one individual, selection of it is not so easy, 

 unless it occurs in a conquering stag. But now suppose that one 

 member of the herd — perhaps because of more efficient teeth, 

 perhaps by greater muscularity of stomach, perhaps by secretion 

 of more appropriate gastric juices — is enabled to eat and digest a 

 not uncommon plant which the others refuse. This peculiarity 

 may, if food is scarce, conduce to better self-maintenance, and 

 better fostering of young, if the individual is a hind. But unless 

 this plant is abundant, and the advantage consequently great, the 

 advantages which other members of the herd gain from other 

 slight variations may be equivalent. This one has unusual agil- 

 ity and leaps a chasm which others balk at. That one develops 

 longer hair in winter, and resists the cold better. Another has 

 a skin less irritated by flies, and can graze without so much 

 interruption. Here is one which has an unusual power of detect- 

 ing food under the snow; and there is one which shows extra 

 sagacity in the choice of a shelter from wind and rain. That the 

 variation giving the ability to eat a plant before unutilized, may 

 become a trait of the herd, and eventually of a variety, it is need- 

 ful that the individual in which it occurs shall have more de- 

 scendants, or better descendants, or both, than have the various 

 other individuals severally having their small superiorities. If 

 these other individuals severally profit by their small superiori- 

 ties, and transmit them to equally large numbers of offspring, no 

 increase of the variation in question can take place : it must soon 

 be canceled. Whether in the Origin of Species Mr. Darwin has 

 recognized this fact, I do not remember, but he has certainly done 

 it by implication in his Animals and Plants under Domestication. 

 Speaking of variations in domestic animals, he there says that, 

 " Any particular variation would generally be lost by crossing, 

 reversion, and the accidental destruction of the varying individ- 

 uals, unless carefully preserved by man" (Vol. II, 292). That 

 which survival of the fittest does in cases like the one I have in- 

 stanced is to keep all faculties up to the mark, by destroying such 

 as have faculties in some respect below the mark ; and it can pro- 

 duce development of some one faculty only if that faculty is pre- 

 dominantly important. It seems to me that many naturalists 

 have practically lost sight of this, and assume that natural selec- 



