5 2 DARWINIANISM. 



semble which is a new species ; and this is Natural 

 Selection, " the law of Natural Selection that has now 

 been discovered." 



" The old argument from design in nature fails," he 

 says, " now that the law of natural selection has leen dis- 

 covered ! " 



Leaving, however, what relates further to animals, let 

 us pass to a word or two of the numerous similar 

 references to plants. It is by what concerns security 

 that he (Erasmus) is led here also : " The contrivances for 

 the purposes of security extend even to vegetables, as is 

 seen in the wonderful and various means of their con- 

 cealing or defending their honey from insects, and their 

 seeds from birds" (Krause, p. 182). At first, he opines 

 (p. 185), there would be few vegetables, but those would 

 intermarry, and increase. There would be contests 

 among them for light and air above, as for food and 

 moisture below leading necessarily to changes of 

 structure in them. Single bulbs would assume to 

 themselves more bulbs would become at last, as trees, 

 a compound of many bulbs each " a swarm of 

 vegetables." Necessarily there would be varieties among 

 them. Thus some, too weak of themselves, would " learn 

 to adhere to their neighbours, either by putting forth 

 roots like the ivy, or by tendrils like the vine, or by 

 spiral contortions like the honeysuckle ; or by growing 

 upon them like the mistletoe, and taking nourishment 

 from their barks, or by only lodging or adhering on to 

 them, and deriving nourishment from the air as 

 Tillandsia. This plant never germinates on the ground, 

 but is borne by the wind till the filaments of its long 

 capillary plume are caught and entangled." On all 

 these contrivances of plumes, hooks, etc., Erasmus is 

 specially full. But still to him there must be contest 

 " struggle." Even for that element of theory (as we have 



