14 THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS 



The following words give Darwin's own esti- 

 mate of the importance of Selection. 



"Slow though the process of selection may be, 

 if feeble man can do much by artificial selection, 

 I can see no limit to the amount of change, to 

 the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations 

 between all organic beings, one with another and 

 with their physical conditions of life, which may 

 have been affected in the long course of time 

 through nature's power of selection, that is by 

 the survival of the fittest" (Origin of Species, 

 p. 85). 



The theory of Natural Selection has been 

 much attacked, both on its first publication and 

 in recent years; many of the opponents of the 

 theory, however, have failed to grasp its mean- 

 ing. "The great engine of Natural Selection," 

 as Mr. Francis Darwin said in 1908, "is taunted 

 now-a-days, as it was fifty years ago, with being 

 merely a negative power" that is, people fancy 

 that it can do no more than get rid of the unfit. 

 If, however, the comparison with artificial selec- 

 tion holds good, it is evident that the power is 

 a positive one, capable of creating new forms, 

 with organs perfectly adapted to their own needs, 

 just as the cultivated forms created through se- 

 lection by man are perfectly adapted to his 

 requirements. 



Darwin himself never claimed for Natural 



