216 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



To take an altogether different case. Care of, and tender- 

 ness towards, the aged and infirm are actions on all hands 

 admitted to be " right ;" but it is difficult to see how such 

 actions could ever have been so useful to a community as 

 to have been seized on and developed by the exclusive 

 action of the law of the " survival of the fittest." On the 

 contrary, it seems probable that on strict utilitarian 

 principles the rigid political economy of Tierra del Fuego 

 would have been eminently favoured and diffused by the 

 impartial action of " Natural Selection " alone. By the 

 rigid political economy referred to, is meant that destruc- 

 tion and utilization of " useless mouths " which Mr. Darwin 

 himself describes in his highly interesting a Journal of 

 Researches." 1 He says: "It is certainly true, that when 

 pressed in winter by hunger, they kill and devour their old 

 women before they kill their dogs. The boy being asked 

 why they did this, answered, ' Doggies catch otters, old 

 women no.' They often run away into the mountains, but 

 they are pursued by the men and brought back to the 

 slaughter-house at their own firesides." Mr. Edward 

 Bartlett, who has recently returned from the Amazons, 

 reports that at one Indian village, where the cholera made 

 its appearance, the whole population immediately dispersed 

 into the woods, leaving the sick to perish uncared for and 

 alone. Now, had the Indians remained, undoubtedly far 

 more would have died ; as doubtless, in Tierra del Fuego, 

 the destruction of the comparatively useless old women 

 has often been the means of preserving the healthy and 

 reproductive young. Such acts surely must be greatly 

 favoured by the stern and unrelenting action of exclusive 

 " Natural Selection." 



1 See 2nd edition, vol. i. p. 214. 



