THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 475 



are most competent. To use a familar proverb, the weak- 

 est goes to the wall. But the triumphant fraction again 

 breeds to over-production, transmitting the qualities which 

 secured its maintenance, but transmitting them indifferent 

 degrees. The struggle for food again supervenes, and those 

 to whom the favorable quality has been transmitted in 

 excess, will triumph as before. 



It is easy to see that we have here the addition of incre- 

 ments favorable to the individual, still more rigorously 

 carried out than in the case of domestication; for not only 

 are unfavorable specimens not selected by nature, but they 

 are destroyed. This is what Mr. Darwin calls "Natural 

 Selection," which acts by the preservation and accumula- 

 tion of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the 

 preserved being. With this idea he interpenetrates and 

 leavens the vast store of facts that he and others have col- 

 lected. We cannot, without shutting our eyes through 

 fear or prejudice, fail to see that Darwin is here dealing, 

 not with imaginary, but with true causes; nor can we fail 

 to discern what vast modifications may be produced by 

 natural selection in periods sufficiently long. Each indi- 

 vidual increment may resemble what mathematicians call a 

 " differential " (a quantity indefinitely small); but definite 

 and great changes may obviously be produced by the inte- 

 gration of these infinitesimal quantities, through practically 

 infinite time. 



If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the notion of creative 

 power, acting after human fashion, it certainly is not be- 

 cause he is unacquainted with the numberless exquisite 

 adaptations on which this notion of a supernatural Artificer 

 has been founded. His book is a repository of the most 

 startling facts of this description. Take the marvelous 

 observation which he cites from Dr. Kriiger, where a bucket, 

 with an aperture serving as a spout, is formed in an orchid. 

 Bees visit the flower: in eager search of material for their 

 combs, they push each other into the bucket, the drenched 

 ones escaping from their involuntary bath by the spout. 

 Here they rub their backs against the viscid stigma of the 

 flower and obtain glue; then against the pollen-masses, 

 which are thus stuck to the back of the bee and carried 

 away. " When the bee, so provided, flies to another flower 

 or to the same flower a second time, and is pushed by its 

 comrades into the bucket, and then crawls out by the 



