8 FIFTY YEARS OF DARWINISM 



' COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS 

 BEFORE ' 



The characteristic feature in which Natural 

 Selection differs from every other attempt to 

 solve the problem of evolution is the account 

 taken of the struggle for existence, and the role 

 assigned to it. Professor Osborn l refers to the 

 keen appreciation of this struggle in Tennyson's 

 noble poem, In Memoriam, the dedication of which 

 is dated 1849, ten years before the Origin. The 

 poet is disquieted by : 



' Nature red in tooth and claw 



With ravine, ' 



and by 



' . . . finding that of fifty seeds 

 She often brings but one to bear.' 



It is interesting to note that the obvious under- 

 statement of this last passage is corrected in the 

 author's notes published by his son a few years 

 ago. In these we find 'for fifty, read myriad'. 

 The poignant sense of the waste of individual 

 lives is brought into close relation in the poem 

 with the destruction of the type or species : 



'So careful of the type she seems, 

 So careless of the single life ; ' 



' " So careful of the type ? " but no, 

 From scarped cliff and quarried stone 

 She cries " A thousand types are gone : 



I care for nothing, all shall go ".' 



1 From the Greeks to Darwin, New York, 1894, 141. 



