130 EVOLUTION AND ANBIAL LIFE 



'great among the bees which first come from their cells as in a 

 series of individuals long exposed to the struggle for existence. 



Among ladybird beetles of a certain species {Hippodamia 

 convergens), eighty-four different easily describable "aberra- 

 tions" or variations in the number and arrangement of the 

 black spots on the wing covers have been traced. These 

 variations are again just as numerous in individuals exposed 

 to the struggle for life as in those just escaped from the pupal 

 state. In these characters, there is, therefore, no rigorous 

 choice due to natural selection. Such specific characters, 

 without individual utility, may be classed as indifferent, so 

 far as natural selection is concerned, and the great mass of 

 specific characters actually used in systematic classification are 

 thus indifferent. 



And what is true in the case of the orioles and the ladv- 

 birds is true as a broad proposition of the related species which 

 constitute any one of the genera of animals or plants. All 

 that survive are sufficiently fitted to live, each individual, and 

 therefore, each species, matched to its surroundings as the dough 

 •is to the pan, or the river to its bed, but all adaptation lying ap- 

 parently within a range of the greatest variety in nonessentials. 

 Adaptation is presumably the work of natural selection; the 

 division of forms into species is the result of existence under 

 new and diverse conditions. 



