82 CHARLES DARWIN 



the country. This race would consequently multiply, 

 while the others would decrease ; not only from their 

 inability to sustain the attacks of disease, but from their 

 incapacity of contending with their more vigorous 

 neighbours. . . . The same disposition to form varieties 

 still existing, a darker and a darker race would in the 

 course of time occur ; and as the darkest would be the 

 best fitted for the climate, this would at last become the 

 most prevalent, if not the only race in the country.' 

 Here we have not merely the radical concept of natural 

 selection, but also the subordinate idea of its exertion 

 upon what Darwin calls ' spontaneous variations/ 

 What is wanting in the paper is the application of the 

 faintly descried law to the facts and circumstances of 

 general biology : Wells saw only a particular instance, 

 where Darwin and Wallace more vividly perceived a uni- 

 versal principle. Again, in 1831, Mr. Patrick Matthew 

 in that singular appendix to his book on naval timber 

 actually enunciates the same idea, applied this time 

 to the whole of nature, in words sometimes almost iden- 

 tical with Darwin's own. ' As nature in all her modifi- 

 cations of life,' says this unconscious discoverer, ' has a 

 power of increase far beyond what is needed to supply 

 the place of what falls by Time's decay, those indivi- 

 duals who possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, 

 hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without repro- 

 ducing either a prey to their natural devourers, or 

 sinking under disease, generally induced by want of 

 nourishment, their place being occupied by the more 

 perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the 

 means of existence. . . . The self-regulating adaptive 

 disposition of organised life may, in part, be traced to 



