THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 43 



feed the young in the manner practised by the female 

 before he was admitted to her company. 



" I may now tell you that the true reason for my 

 quoting Mr. Bartlett was not to bring against him a 

 ridiculous charge of concealing the truth, but to 

 bring him forward as evidence to the correctness of 

 my inference that when the danger-season to the 

 cubs is past, the male assumes his part in the family 

 as its protector and provider. I want you now, my 

 friend, to answer me this question in a straightforward 

 manner. If we take it for granted, merely for the 

 argument's sake, that Nature in the feral existence of 

 all her prolific species repeats the story of the instinct 

 of the males given by the Zoological Gardens, what 

 becomes of Darwin's doctrine of the Survival of the 

 Fittest, or of the Struggle for Existence, as he has 

 denned it ? " 



" If Nature does so," replied my friend frankly, " and 

 if her mode of deleting the excess of reproduction of 

 all prolific species be accomplished by the males 

 before the young appear as food-seekers, then of course 

 the Darwinian theory is no longer tenable ; for there 

 can be no struggle for existence such as Darwin has 

 defined, nor any natural selection or survival of the 

 fittest, brought about by the action of individual 

 variations, while it is evident that the survival that 

 takes place is not the survival of a selected number of 

 individuals, but the survival of the average." 



" Yes," I said. " Darwin knew nothing of the 

 manner in which the excess of her prolific species was 



