60 NATURAL SELECTION. [CHAP. IV. 



others ; and still further modifications of the same kind would 

 often still further increase the advantage, as long as the species 

 continued under the same conditions of life and profited by similar 

 means of subsistence and defence. No country can be named in 

 which all the native inhabitants are now so perfectly adapted to 

 each other and to the physical conditions under which they live, 

 that none of them could be still better adapted or improved ; for 

 in all countries, the natives have been so far conquered by 

 naturalised productions, that they have allowed some foreigners 

 to take firm possession of the land. And as foreigners have thus 

 in every country beaten some of the natives, we may safely 

 conclude that the natives might have been modified with 

 advantage, so as to have better resisted the intruders. 



As man can produce, and certainly has produced, a great result 

 by his methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may 

 not natural selection effect 1 Man can act only on external and 

 visible characters : Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the 

 natural preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for 

 appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. 

 She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitu- 

 tional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects 

 only for his own good : Nature only for that of the being which 

 she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her, as 

 is implied by the fact of their selection. Man keeps the natives 

 of many climates in the same country ; he seldom exercises each 

 selected character in some peculiar and fitting manner ; he feeds 

 a long and a short beaked pigeon on the same food ; he does not 

 exercise a long-backed or long-legged quadruped in any peculiar 

 manner ; he exposes sheep with long and short wool to the same 

 climate. He does not allow the most vigorous males to struggle 

 for the females. He does not rigidly destroy all inferior animals, 

 but protects during each varying season, as far as lies in his 

 power, all his productions. He often begins his selection by some 

 half-monstrous form ; or at least by some modification prominent 

 enough to catch the eye or to be plainly useful to him. Under 

 nature, the slightest differences of structure or constitution may 

 well turn the nicely-balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so 

 be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man ! 

 how short his time ! and consequently how poor will be his 

 results, compared with those accumulated by Nature during whole 

 geological periods ! Can we wonder, then, that Nature's produc- 

 tions should be far " truer" in character than man's productions ; 

 that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex 

 conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher 

 workmanship 1 



It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and 



