34 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



which the large majority of British naturalists would wish 

 to be to-day proclaimed, in the first place with no 

 doubtful or qualifying phrase is that, in their judgment, 

 after these fifty years of examination and testing, his 

 'theory of the origin of species by means of natural 

 selection or the preservation of favoured races in the 

 struggle for life' remains whole and sound and con- 

 vincing, in spite of every attempt to upset it. 



" I am not stating more than the simple truth when 

 I say that, in the judgment of those who are best 

 acquainted with living things in their actual living 

 surroundings, ' natural selection ' retains the position 

 which Mr. Darwin claimed for it of being the main 

 means of the modification of organic forms. 



"Our admiration for the vast series of beautiful 

 observations and interesting inquiries carried out by 

 Darwin during his long life must not lead us to forget 

 that they were devised by him in order to test the truth 

 of his theory and to meet objections to it, and that they 

 were triumphantly successful. They, together with the 

 work of Alfred Russel Wallace and many of their 

 followers, have more and more firmly established 

 Darwin's theory. On the other hand, no attempt to 

 amend that theory in any essential particular has been 

 successful. 



" The nature of organic variation and of the character 

 of the variations upon which natural selection can and 

 does act was not, as we are sometimes asked to believe, 

 neglected or misapprehended by Darwin. The notion 

 that these variations are large and sudden was considered 

 by him, and for reasons set forth by him at considerable 

 length rejected. That notion has in recent years been 

 resuscitated, but its truth has not been rendered probable 

 by evidence either of such an accurate character or of 

 such pertinence as would justify the rejection of Darwin's 



