1887.] ^'^^ [Claypole. 



Among the vertebrates, therefore, of a terrestrial fauna occurs the most 

 rapid evolution of animal forms. The depths of the sea are the places 

 where conditions vary most slowly. The lowest forms of animal life are 

 least affected by changes of environment. Accordingly among low forms 

 of life, and at the sea-bottom, we find most persistence of type. Illustra- 

 tions might readily be quoted, but they are needless. The facts are famil- 

 iar to every naturalist. And reasoning from these facts in the same man- 

 ner as does the mechanician the biologist argues. that could he obtain the 

 requisite unchanging conditions his species would continue unvarying for 

 an indefiaite time. Though still variable they would be perfectly inva- 

 riant. 



VIII. 

 Nature's "Waste of Variates. 



Nature's variates thus produced talve their place among their physical 

 and organic surroundings. With these they are more or less in harmony 

 and in discord. If they can, they live ; if not, they die. Nature has no 

 care for her nurselings. She casts them adrift on the world to shift for 

 themselves ; to swim if they can ; to sinli if they cannot. She neither aids 

 nor hinders them. She "cares for nothing." It is a game of "hit or 

 miss ;" a method of " trial and error."* 



If a somewhat homely simile may be here allowed I will lilien the process 

 of Nature in producing variates that are in harmony with their environ- 

 ment to the plans adopted by large commercial houses in making their 

 goods known. Not knowing where their customers can be found they 

 scatter advertisements wholesale over the country. Here we find the 

 name of the firm in a newspaper, there at a railway station, here in a 

 magazine, there on a blank wall, here on the fly-leaf of a book, there on 

 the back of a railway ticket, in one place on the pavement underfoot, in 

 another on the ceiling overhead, now on a handbill forced on us in 

 the street, then around the pages of a railroad guidebook, and some- 

 times even on the fences and the rocks in little frequented spots. Every- 

 where crops out evidence of a systematic effort to catch the eye of the 

 public by dint of irrepressible advertising without definite method. Of 

 all these attempts the greater part are doomed to failure. Overlooked by the 

 eager readers of the news-sheet and of the railway guide, trampled under 

 foot by the hasty passenger in the street, read and immediately forgotten 

 by the preoccupied and the thoughtless, they live out their little lives as 

 variates among uncongenial conditions, as seed in stony ground, and pass 



* It is to this neglect of her variates that the slowness of Nature's results are due com- 

 pared with the rapidity with which varieties are obtained by man. A valuable seedling 

 grows up in some out of the way place ; man secures it, propagates from it and so per- 

 petuates the variate. But if left to Nature it is probably destroyed and the opportunity lost. 

 Every variety and, still more, every species of Nature's making may fairly be looked on 

 as the result of many experiments undertaken and brought to the verge of success only 

 to be abandoned and fail. 



