176 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



est goes to the wall. But the triumphant fraction 

 again breeds to over-production, transmitting the quali- 

 ties which secured its maintenance, but transmitting 

 them in different degrees. The struggle for food again 

 supervenes, and those to whom the favourable quality 

 has been transmitted in excess, will triumph as before. 



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

 increments favourable to the individual, still more 

 rigorously carried out than in the case of domestica- 

 tion ; for not only are unfavourable specimens not 

 selected by nature, but they are destroyed. This is 

 what Mr. Darwin calls ' Natural Selection,' which acts 

 by the preservation and accumulation 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 collected. We 

 cannot, without shutting our eyes througli fear or pre- 

 judice, 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 

 individual increment may resemble what mathema- 

 ticians call a ' differential ' (a quantity indefinitely 

 small) ; but definite and great changes may obviously 

 be produced by the integration 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 

 'because he is unacquainted with the numberless ex- 

 quisite adaptations, on which this notion of a super- 

 natural Artificer has been founded. His book is a 

 repository of the most startling facts of this description. 

 Take the marvellous 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 



