110 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



as previously pointed out, is more intense among them- 

 selves than it is with the hardware or shoe merchants. 

 Now, if in some large city, a portion of the dry goods 

 merchants should introduce some new feature, such as 

 keeping open evenings and lighting their stores with 

 electricity, while the other dry goods merchants were 

 unable to aflPord this innovation, a new species of dry 

 goods store would arise, every individual of which 

 would be at an advantage over the old species. The 

 struggle for existence would then go on between the dif- 

 ferent individuals of the new species and those who 

 were able to afford the most brilliant illumination or to 

 keep open the longest would survive, while the others 

 would die. In this sense natural selection is protecting 

 the species regardless of the individual, but in a deeper 

 sense it is protecting the individual regardless of the 

 species. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL SELECTION. 



Mr. Romanes has also raised the deeper question, has 

 natural selection, even in its widest sense, originated all 

 new species? His original paper on Physiological 

 Selection was read before the Linnean Society, May 6, 

 ISSG/'^ and shortly aftervv^ards an abstract appeared in 

 the columns of Nature. This communication aroused a 

 great storm of opposition, Wallace in particular enlist- 

 ing himself with the enemy. Romanes asserts that 

 there are three cardinal difficulties in the way of natural 

 selection, considered as a theory of the origin of species. 

 These are: (1) the difference between species and vari- 

 eties in respect of mutual fertility; (2) the swamping 

 effect of free intercrossing upon an individual variation; 

 and (3) the inutility of a large number of specific char- 

 acters. 



* Jonru. Linn. Soc. xix, pp. 337-411. 



