x OBITUARY 281 
by natural selection necessarily involves the diverg- 
ence of the forms selected. An individual which 
varies, aso facto diverges from the type of its 
“Species; and its progeny, in which the variation 
becomes intensified by selection, must diverge still 
“more, not only from the parent stock, but from 
any other race of that stock starting from a varia- 
tion of a different character. The selective process 
could not take place unless the selected variety 
was either better adapted to the conditions than 
the original stock, or adapted to other conditions 
than the original stock. In the first case, the 
original stock would be sooner or later extirpated ; 
in the second, the type, as represented by the 
original stock and the variety, would occupy more 
diversified stations than it did before. 
The theory, essentially such as it was published 
fourteen years later, was written out in 1844, and 
Darwin was so fully convinced of the importance 
of his work, as it then stood, that he made special 
arrangements for its publication in case of his 
death. But it is a singular example of reticent 
fortitude, that, although for the next fourteen years 
the subject never left his mind, and during the 
latter half of that period he was constantly en- 
gaged in amassing facts bearing upon it from wide 
_ reading, a colossal correspondence, and a long series 
of experiments, only two or three friends were 
cognisant of his views. ‘To the outside world he 
_ seemed to have his hands quite sufficiently full of 
