64 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



he may select the wrong puppy and drown 

 its superior. The horse that won the 

 great race may have had a fleeter-footed com- 

 panion in the same stable had the trainer 

 known how to develop his possibilites. The 

 gardener may have passed the best root or 

 stem through carelessness. But nature makes 

 no such mistakes, or if she does she eventually 

 redeems them. Her method, while it is wholly 

 fortuitous and unintelligent, is practically in- 

 fallible. The condition of survival is, adapta- 

 tion to environment. The very process of 

 selection is, in itself, a sure test of fitness. 

 True, moral considerations are eliminated — at 

 least in the non-social world— yet nature offers 

 something like a fair field and no favors. When 

 we speak of nature's favorites, we simply mean 

 those who are best fitted to meet her hard 

 conditions. 



Take a row of celery plants, from which 

 future seedlings are to be "selected." 



In this instance, let us suppose, the quality 

 desired is ability to resist frost. How is the 

 gardener to know which of fifty plants are the 

 "best'' in this respect. He has no method of 

 finding out with any degree of certainty. But 

 nature comes along some night with a sharp 

 frost and "selects" ten by killing forty And 

 the very act of this "natural" selection proves 



