THE ADVANTAGES OF VARIATIONS. 1 87 



variations to their young, some of the latter may possess the 

 favourable difference in a more marked and pronounced 

 form than the parents, and these again transmit the increased 

 favourable variation to their offspring. 



There thus arises from these premises, i.e , the facts of 

 the struggle for existence and that variations occur and 

 are transmitted from parent to offspring, the inevitable 

 consequence that those which possess any advantageous 

 variation in the most marked degree will most surely arrive 

 at maturity and be able to perpetuate their kind. They, 

 in fact, will survive because they are the most fitted to do 

 so. Being better protected against cold or heat, drought 

 or flood ; provided with better sight or hearing, or keener 

 scent, or greater powers of locomotion to enable them to 

 procure food or escape from their enemies ; with modifica- 

 tions of colour or of form which enable them to escape 

 detection by their foes, or to lie concealed whilst waiting 

 for their prey ; it is they who are the best adapted for the 

 battle of life, for its changing conditions, its competitions, 

 struggles and difficulties. 



And as the conditions of life alter, as environments 

 change or as migrations to new surroundings and localities 

 take place, so will the variations which are best adapted to 

 circumstances be preserved, perpetuated and accumulate 

 until in the course of time new species, new genera and 

 new families are evolved, which may eventually be so unlike 

 their remote ancestors that the recognition of phylogenetic 

 connection between them may be not only extremely 

 difficult but even impossible. 



The fact that small differences which arise in animals 

 and plants can be transmitted from parent to offspring, and 

 that by selection of peculiar features through a succession 

 of generations they will be intensified to an extreme extent 

 and new specific characters produced, has been taken 



