274 THE SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [Ch. XIY. 



the fifth edition of the Origin. The most important alterations 

 were suggested by a remarkable paper in the North British 

 Review (June, 1867) written by the late Fleeming Jenkin. 



It is not a little remarkable that the criticisms, which my 

 father, as I believe, felt to be the most valuable ever made on 

 his views should have come, not from a professed naturalist but 

 from a Professor of Engineering. 



The point on which Fleeming Jenkin convinced my father 

 is the extreme difficulty of believing that single individuals 

 which differ from their fellows in the possession of some useful 

 character can be the starting point of a new variety. Thus the 

 origin of a new variety is more likely to be found in a species 

 which presents the incipient character in a large number of 

 its individuals. This point of view was of course perfectly 

 familiar to him, it was this that induced him to study " un- 

 conscious selection," where a breed is formed by the long- 

 continued preservation by Man of all those individuals which 

 are best adapted to his needs: not as in the art of the 

 professed breeder, where a single individual is picked out to 

 breed from. 



It is impossible to give in a short compass an account of 

 Fleeming Jenkin' s argument. My father's copy of the paper 

 (ripped out of the volume as usual, and tied with a bit of 

 string) is annotated in pencil in many places. I quote 

 a passage opposite which my father has written " good 

 sneers " — but it should be remembered that he used the word 

 " sneer " in rather a special sense, not as necessarily implying 

 a feeling of bitterness in the critic, but rather in the sense of 

 " banter." Speaking of the " true believer," Fleeming Jenkin 

 says, p. 293:— 



" He can invent trains of ancestors of whose existence there 

 is no evidence ; he can marshal hosts of equally imaginary 

 foes ; he can call up continents, floods, and peculiar atmospheres ; 

 he can dry up oceans, split islands, and parcel out eternity at 

 will; surely with these advantages he must be a dull fellow if 

 he cannot scheme some series of animals and circumstances 

 explaining our assumed difficulty quite naturally. Feeling the 

 difficulty of dealing with adversaries who command so huge a 

 domain of fancy, we will abandon these arguments, and trust to 



house. I have been as yet in a very poor way ; it seems as soon as the 

 stimulus of mental work stops, my whole strength gives way. As yet I 

 have hardly crawled half a mile from the house, and then have been 

 fearfully fatigued. It is enough to make one wish oneself quiet in a 

 •omfortable tomb." 



