DARWINISM ATTACKED. 85 



feet would be sure to be a loser ? Even if the inflammation 

 caused by the wound did not destroy him, it would seem 

 impossible for the animal to obtain his share of food. Of 

 course, a footless race would be eliminated in a compara- 

 tively short time, but the survival of so many mutilated 

 individuals shows that selection is not so rigid as to eliminate 

 all unfit individuals, even though their disadvantage be very 

 great. 



"If a very disadvantageous character may thus fail to pro- 

 duce destruction it must be still more true that a favour- 

 able character, occurring in a single individual, has really 

 little chance for survival. The individual possessing it will 

 have to compete with accident, with indiscriminate slaughter, 

 and with other conditions which we have just seen may be 

 sufficient to preserve even a broken-legged individual. 

 Nothing can seem more evident than that the web of the 

 foot and the muscles of the legs are of use in swimming, 

 and have therefore been developed by the preserving influ- 

 ence of natural selection. If anything is of selective value, 

 these characters certainly are. But when we find that a 

 frog with no feet can survive the struggle for existence, it 

 is evidently difficult to believe that single variations, either of 

 use or disadvantage, will have any special likelihood of sur- 

 viving at the expense of other members of the race, so as 

 eventually to replace all others. But only thus can they 

 be 'seized upon by natural selection and preserved.' ' 



There are two important objections to the natural selec- 

 tion theory based on the relations of this theory with the 

 two other selection theories, namelv sexual 



Natural selec- . . . 



tion needs the selection and artificial selection. Wolff 19 has 

 wSse/ectfon made tne criticism that natural selection must 

 theory, which is be supported by the sexual selection theory 

 discredited, j , T , , . . 



in order to stand. It makes no pretension of 



explaining those extraordinary secondary sexual characters 

 such as ornamentation, songs, dances, odours, etc., which 



