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x OBITUARY 279 
even remotely approximated ; and he very soon 
had his reward in the discovery “that selec- 
tion was the keystone of man’s success in mak- 
ing useful races of animals and plants.” (I. p. 
83.) 
This was the first step in Darwin’s progress, 
though its immediate result was to bring him face 
to face with a great difficulty. ‘“ But how selection 
could be applied to organisms living in a state of 
nature remained for some time a mystery to me.” 
(I. p. 83.) 
The key to this mystery was furnished by the 
accidental perusal of the famous essay of Malthus 
“On Population” in the autumn of 1838. The 
necessary result of unrestricted multiplication is 
competition for the means of existence. The suc- 
_ cess of one competitor involves the failure of the 
rest, that is, their extinction ; and this “ selection” 
is dependent on the better adaptation of the suc- 
cessful competitor to the conditions of the com- 
petition. Variation occurs under natural, no less 
than under artificial, conditions. Unrestricted 
- multiplication implies the competition of varieties 
and the selection of those which are relatively best 
adapted to the conditions. 
Neither Erasmus Darwin, nor Lamarck, had any 
‘inkling of the possibility of this process of “ natural 
selection” ; and though it had been foreshadowed 
by Wells in 1813, and more fully stated by 
Matthew in 1831, the speculations of the latter 
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