14 DARWINISM. 



been multiplying, not in the same proportion as the 

 elephants, but very much more rapidly. The great 

 desideratum would be standing room. The back of 

 an elephant, or the branch of an oak, would no doubt 

 command an enormous rent, and a right of way across 

 the heads of your neighbours would be religiously 

 guarded by the law of the land. Nor would the posi- 

 tion of affairs be better in the surrounding sea ; for 

 while these elephants have been computed to breed at 

 the rate of two young ones in thirty years, a single 

 codfish has been found to produce in one year more 

 than six millions of eggs, and there are other creatures 

 infinitely more prolific l . 



You see, then, that the struggle for existence is an 

 absolute necessity; and out of this all-essential strife 

 springs what has been well called Natural Selection. 

 What is meant by this will more easily be understood 

 by looking first at Artificial Selection, which has been 

 practised by man, sometimes consciously, and oftener 

 unconsciously, in the process of domesticating a great 

 number of plants and animals. Dogs, sheep, bulls, pigs, 

 horses, fowls, pigeons, cabbages, and other culinary 

 vegetables, strawberries, and all manner of edible fruits, 

 together with gay-coloured, curiously-formed, sweetly- 

 perfumed garden-flowers innumerable, have been, and 

 are still being, subjected to man's selection. That the 

 wonderful changes which occur are indeed due to man's 

 repeated choice of the varieties which suit his purposes, 



1 Darwin, 'Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. 

 P- 379- 



