THE MATHEMATICAL TEST 



OF 



NATURAL SELECTION 1 . 



THE soul of many an anti-Darwinian will have been 

 cheered by Mr. A. W. Bennett's paper on ' The Theory of 

 Natural Selection from a Mathematical Point of View/ 

 It is, in fact, a very admirable piece of special pleading, 

 based on a skilful assumption of premisses which, to a 

 careless or biassed observer, might seem indisputable. 



The tendency to variation is spoken of as something 

 very mysterious, of which no adequate account has ever 

 yet been given. Yet the very simple explanation is no 

 bad one, that where two parents are concerned in the 

 production of any offspring, the product in part re- 

 sembling each of the producers must of necessity also 

 in part differ from each of them. Between the parents 

 themselves, Mr. Herbert Spencer has shown that differ- 

 ences of age and external circumstances would ensure 

 the requisite want of resemblance in the absence of any 

 other cause. 



1 The rigid test of mathematical calculation' is then 



1 Reprinted from ' Nature,' No. 56. 



