".] MISAPPLICATION OF MALTHUS 15 



of species, as all systematists will at once 

 acknowledge ; for the botanists at Kew have 

 nothing else whereon to base their descriptions 

 of plants in the Kew Herbarium. This was a 

 point which never entered Malthus' mind when 

 he wrote his Essay on Population. He was only 

 concerned with one single species Homo sapiens. 

 Darwin, by taking Malthus' conclusions as to 

 the elimination of the sick and needy in a time 

 of scarcity of food, obviously applied a process 

 which has nothing to do with the origination of 

 new structures', and although Darwin assumed 

 the existence of variations of structure, to 

 account for their destruction (to explain the 

 fact that myriads of offspring are born, but few 

 survive every year) he supposed the majority of 

 seedlings or young animals were born with 

 "injurious," that is, "inadaptive" structures, 

 which per se killed off the unfitted to survive. 

 This was a pure and unwarrantable assumption 

 even Malthus did not assume this. Mr Reid in 

 following Darwin endorses this assumption, for 

 he says : 



" Nature has eliminated with greater or lesser 

 certainty all individuals incapable of withstanding 

 want, hardship, or disease, or who are deficient in 

 endurance, speed, sight, scent, hearing, taste, 

 digestion, and so forth." 1 



He brings forward no proof or examples that 



1 Op. cit., p. 16. 



