CHAPTER III 

 THE METHOD 



THE preceding treatment of evolution has been 

 confined to data which seem to support the 

 principle. But the method is equally inter- 

 esting. 



DARWIN AND WALLACE. Not until Darwin, did any- 

 one draw the same conclusion, as to the method, from 

 the same well known facts as he did, except Alfred 

 E. Wallace, who published his paper on Natural Selec- 

 tion simultaneously with Darwin's "Origin of Species." 

 But Darwin undoubtedly preceded him in the concep- 

 tion of the theory. For in 1839 Darwin wrote a fore- 

 shadowing of it, and was really at that time convinced 

 that variation, and natural selection, formed the 

 principal method. He arrived home from his voyage 

 on the Beagle in 1837; and in 1844 he wrote the 

 "Origin of Species," very much as published in 1859. 

 Darwin and Wallace both noticed that living animals 

 had a close resemblance, not only to each other, but, 

 also, to fossil animals of the same region. They experi- 

 mented, by breeding domestic animals, and also 

 noticed, that structural variations, from the parent 

 forms, appeared frequently in the offspring. This led 

 them to speculate and theorize, upon the probable 

 parallel, between the method in domestication, and that 

 in the wild state, until they both published, at the 

 same time, the hypothesis of natural selection, in the 

 survival of the fittest, as the method by which all 

 species had been produced. Their speculation how- 

 ever, was inductive, not metaphysical. It was the re- 



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