200 LIFE ON THE EARTH. 



NATUKAL SELECTION. 



Moved by such considerations, an eminent natu- 

 ralist and geologist of our day has quitted the high 

 road of the Systema Natura, and is seeking for 

 the history of species 1 by a path which takes the 

 same general direction as that already explored by 

 Lamarck toward the primitive germs and primordial 

 forms of life. Nature, he affirms, in successive ge- 

 nerations gives varieties; these in the struggle for 

 existence have unequal fortune, those most adapted 

 to the circumstances of the time and place prosper, 

 and give origin to descendants which run the same 

 risks, and under the same principle of ' natural selec- 

 tion' acquire more and more the character of distinct- 

 ness and of superiority. Following out these ideas, he 

 has arrived at results which are thus expressed: 



'Although much remains obscure, and will long 

 remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the 

 most deliberate study and most dispassionate judg- 

 ment of which I am capable, that the view which 

 most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly 

 entertained, namely, that each species has been in- 

 dependently created, is erroneous. I am fully con- 

 vinced that species are not immutable; but that 

 those belonging to what are called the same genera 



1 Darwin, Origin of Species, 1859. 



