EVOLUTION AS A NATURAL PROCESS 117 



of more than twenty-five years of patient study of 

 the phenomena of nature, utiHzing the observations 

 of wild hfe in many regions visited by him when he was 

 the naturahst of the ''Beagle" during its famous voy- 

 age around the world. He also considered at length 

 the results of the breeder's work with domesticated 

 animals, and he showed for the first time that tln^ 

 latter have an evolutionary significance. Because 

 his logical assembly of wide series of facts in this and 

 later volumes did so much to convince the intellectual 

 world of the reasonableness of evolution, Danvin 

 is usually and wrongly hailed as the founder of the 

 doctrine. It is interesting to note in passing that 

 Alfred Russel Wallace presented a precisely similar 

 outline of nature's workings at about the same time 

 as the statement by Darwin of his theory of natural 

 selection. But Wallace himself has said that the 

 greater credit belongs to the latter investigator who 

 had worked out a more complete analysis on the ba^is 

 of far more extensive observation and research. 



The fundamental point from which the doctrine of 

 natural selection proceeds is the fact that all creatures 

 are more or less perfectly adapted to the circumstances 

 which they must meet in carrying on their lives ; this is 

 the reason why so much has been said in earlier con- 

 nections regarding the universal occurrence of organic 

 adaptation. An animal is not an independent thing: 

 its life is intertwined with the lives of countless other 

 creatures, and its very living substance has been buih 

 up out of materials which with their endowments 

 of energy have been wrested from the environment. 

 Every animal, therefore, is engaged in an unceas- 



