426 THE BIOCOSMOS HISTORICAL. 



Origin of Species (Chap. II.) : "Many years 

 ago, when comparing and seeing others com- 

 pare, the birds from the closely neighboring 

 islands of the Galapagos Archipelago, one 

 with another, and with those from the Amer- 

 ican mainland, I was much struck how entirely 

 vague and arbitrary is the distinction between 

 species and varieties," and he might have add- 

 ed genera. In fact there was no fixed bound- 

 ary line between these classes; every indi- 

 vidual, plant and animal, varied from its par- 

 ents and from its brothers and sisters. Va- 

 riability of all living organisms thus became 

 his germinal starting-point, seen plain in the 

 Galapagos Islands ; but when he went home to 

 his own British Island and saw the intense in- 

 sular struggle for existence, he found his sec- 

 ond great category, Natural Selection, as the 

 chief, though not the only, ground of this con- 

 dition in which the fittest persist and propa- 

 gate. Says he: "As more individuals are 

 produced than can possibly survive, there 

 must in every case be a struggle for exist- 

 ence." But who will survive? Those indi- 

 viduals "which have favorable differences and 

 variations" are preserved, while the injurious 

 variations will cause destruction. He also 

 states (Origin, II), whence he derived his 

 view: "It is the doctrine of Malthus applied 

 with manifold force to the whole animal and 



