1 40 Journal of Travel a fid N'aiural History. 



new species, a double phenomenon which appears to us inexpli- 

 cable under Mr Darwin's theory. 



The last of the Darwinian theories to which we demur, is that 

 of natural selection. Our objection to it in wholesale is, that it 

 implies constant succession of failures and a never-ending waste 

 of power on the part of nature, both of which we believe to be 

 inconsistent with her working ; she never errs and never wastes. 

 No instance has ever been pointed out of a failure by nature. No 

 species has ever been discovered which is not the fittest for its 

 place. Mr Darwin admits the absence of all evidence of the 

 transitions which his theory requires, and endeavours to explain it 

 away by the imperfection of the geological record and the short- 

 ness of our current living experience. Of course, if that is a 

 sufficient apology for the absence of transitional forms, it is 

 equally so for the absence of any unfit forms. We are of those 

 who think that it is not sufficient. Our creed is that nature not 

 only does everything well but everything best, and that it is an 

 inherent part of the constitution of the laws of development that 

 they must produce the fittest — that they have no power to produce 

 anything but the fittest — just as in minerals, however various the 

 forms of crystals may be, they are all crystals. In minerals 

 nature never deviates off into vagaries, making them globes or 

 ovals. Whatever may be their constituent elements, the inherent 

 necessity of their constitution compels them to appear in angular 

 forms. So the laws of development of organic beings leave only one 

 course open to them, and that leading to the production of the fittest. 

 This hypothesis is at least in accordance with known facts. The 

 theory of natural selection has to assume its facts and apologise 

 for their absence. 



It is the attempt to explain the evidence of design by natural 

 selection, which is the weak link in the theory. Had the origin of 

 that been left unexplained, or simply assumed to be the product of 

 laws bearing that result ifi gremio, and natural selection limited to 

 dealing with the fate of species after their appearance under such 

 laws, or applied only to explain or maintain a progressive advance 

 in the scale of life in general, it would not have been open to 

 the same objections, nor would it have encountered the same 

 opposition. 



The simple proposition that when two competing forms of life 

 appear, the weakest will go to the wall, and disappear from the strife, 

 leaving the other as the fittest in possession of the field, is not cal- 



