ii.] STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 17 



With herbaceous plants, the seedlings often 

 spring up in masses, but as no two seeds are 

 absolutely equal in point of size and in the 

 amount of nourishment stored up within them 

 for the embryo, they come up at different 

 rates, so that the first get the start and 

 smother the later and smaller plantlets; so 

 that there are at least three great causes of 

 destruction " fortuitous " as Darwin called 

 them. But in all cases the seedlings would have 

 grown perfectly well had the environment been 

 propitious. This is the true field or operation 

 of natural selection. A bad term, because there 

 is no real " selection " whatever. It is simply 

 natural ill-luck for the deceased and good fortune 

 for the survivors. It is merely the better adapted 

 under the circumstances which live. Darwinians, 

 as Mr Reid tells us in the above quotation, also 

 use the term "acquired characters" for mutilations 

 and scars. I at once would say that evolution 

 has nothing to do with such things, and all asser- 

 tions that they are not usually inherited may be 

 doubtless true ; for if they were, and if lost 

 members were not reproduced, the offspring of 

 warriors might have very little left to inherit, 

 if lost arms and legs could not be reproduced ! 



The question before us is the same as Darwin's 

 What is " The Origin of Species ? " But Darwin 

 avoided dealing with the actual origin of varia- 

 tions, i.e., " incipient species," as he called them, 



