3 o6 STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS 



ground in the battle of life is a totally different question. This 

 may depend on conditions of the environment. Among fishes we 

 have seen that there are great facilities for the sperm cell to reach 

 the germ cell, and that large numbers of individuals might possibly 

 inherit an anomaly in one generation. This would make the result 

 of the struggle for existence quite different from what it would be 

 if only one in a generation inherited the anomaly. 



There is no good reason why the species or genus, originating 

 in a monstrosity, should not in various cases be better able to 

 struggle for life than the type of its progenitors. It would all 

 depend on the means of offence and defence, or the means of 

 obtaining food and of resisting adverse influences. 



Palaeontologists declare that in past ages it was a common 

 phenomenon for a new type to appear, to increase to a maximum, 

 and then gradually disappear, to be replaced gradually by a new 

 type, which in turn followed the same course, to be replaced by a 

 subsequent and more vigorous type. The appearance of a viable 

 and inheritable monstrosity that was better equipped for the 

 struggle of life may possibly account to some extent for this 

 succession of type after type, to go through the same process 

 of increase, decline, and final extinction. 



Man, with his monstrous intelligence (not unfrequently with his 

 monstrous foolishness) has killed out and is killing out a number 

 of types, and is replacing them with his own type. What will be 

 the upshot of all this process remains to be seen. 



Professor Louis Agassiz wrote : x ' However long and frequent 

 the breaks in the geological series may be, in which they would fain 

 bury their transition types, there are many points in the succession 

 where the connection is perfectly distinct and unbroken, and it is 

 just at these points that new organic groups are introduced without 



1 Footnote to p. 188 of Dr. Charles F. Holder's L. Agassiz Life and Works. 



