NA TURK 



541 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4. 1894. 



ANOTHER SUBSTITUTE EOR DARUVX/S.l/. 

 Natii7-es Afe/hod in the Evolution of Life. (London : 

 T. Fisher Unwin, 1894.) 



ALMOST every educated min who can write good 

 English, but who cannot understand Darwin's 

 theory of Natural Selection, seems to feel compelled to 

 explain his difficulties and to offer his own preferable 

 theory in the form of a volume on Evolution. We are 

 thankful that the present anonymous volume is a small 

 one ; but that is its chief, if not its only merit. The 

 writer has not, in the first place, made any serious attempt 

 to understand the theory he objects to as inadequate ; 

 and, in the second place, his own theory is so vague and 

 so entirely unsupported by either fact or argument as to 

 be altogether worthless. A few extracts from the book 

 will serve to support both these statements. 



In the first chapters discussing the Darwinian theory 

 we have this statement : — 



"Deviations, although minute, tend, it is alleged, to accu- 

 mulate, and the accumulations over prolonged periods of 

 'ime ultimately produce variations from the original type, 

 s ilticient to constitute new species." (p. 10.) 



Of course no such " tendency " was ever alleged by 

 I Mrwin. The difference in size between the Shetland 

 pony and the dray-horse is said to be due to difference 

 ( f climate and food — 



"There is no reason to doubt that the size of the 

 former is due to an unfavourable climate and insufficient 

 ((uantity and quality of food, and that of the latter to 

 comfort combined with a generous diet." 



i;ut he ignores the case of the lap-dog and Italian 

 ;;reyhound on the one hand, and the Dingo or Esquimaux 

 (log on the other, where the same contrasted conditions 

 have apparently acted in a manner precisely opposite. 

 Again, he seems to think that the struggle for existence 

 is only the struggle for food, and that such a struggle 

 must cause deterioration. He supposes the case of 

 rabbits on a small island, and says — 



" The rabbits possessing the strongest vitality and able 

 to live on tiie smallest quantity of food, will have proved 

 themselves the fittest. . . . But have the rabbits of the 

 highest type come through the struggle unscathed ? 

 Have the fittest of the survivors become fitter to continue 

 the conflict than the rabbits that were fittest when the 

 conflict began .'' If so, it would, follow that scarcity of 

 food is more favourable to animal life than abundance." 

 (p. 28.) 



Here he clearly falls into confusion through some idea 

 of abstract "fitness" — fitness independent of the condi- 

 tions of existence, as shown by his statement on the next 

 page that the struggle for existence " is evidently inimical 

 to beneficial variation." -Vgain (p. 31) he asks: "Is 

 there any ground for believing that excessive use develops 

 beneficial variation ? " showing that he entirely misunder- 

 stands the theory of the natural selection of individual 

 variations. 



This misconception is further shown by ([uoting the 



inability of the ostrich to fly as an example of " the 



failure of natural selection " ; and as a still more glaring 



example of this failure he refers to the curious Chaparral 



NO. 1301, VOL. 50] 



Cock of California, a ground cuckoa which lives in the 

 open woodlands, runs very quickly, but rarely flies. The 

 alleged "failure" is supposed to exist because the 

 mounted cowboys catch the bird with their whips, and it 

 doesnot escape by flying! It never seems to have occurred 

 to this writer that both these birds are striking examples 

 of the success of natural selection, since they have both 

 become well adapted to a terrestrial life, as shown by their 

 abundance in individuals. The notion seems to be that 

 every bird which cannot fly as well as a swallow or a 

 falcon must be a failure. Yet on the author's own 

 theory, which, as we shall see, is a modified form of 

 special creation, the failure, if it existed, would be even 

 more deplorable. 



This theory, which he calls "Nature's Law of Selec- 

 tion," is thus defined — 



" What, for want of a better term, we call the progress 

 of species, is not evolving a new organism out of one 

 previously existing, but Dy substituting another more 

 closely adapted to the conditions." (p. 62.) 



How this other one is substituted is a mystery which 

 is but imperfectly explained further on, in a chapter on 

 " The iMethod of Evolution," in which we are told that — 



" Every organism is the product of a particular com- 

 bination of force acting on matter according to certain 

 fixed laws, and that the same combination of force, united 

 with matter, has a constant and persistent individuality, 

 which is reproductive." 



And this enigmatical proposition is supposed to be 

 made clearer by the next sentence. 



" As there are elemental substances, so there may be 

 elemental forces possessing special qualities and affinities, 

 which may have, from time to time, as conditions became 

 favourable, combined with each other to work out 

 evolution." (p. 67.) 



If the former statement was obscure, this latter state- 

 ment, of what "may be" and "may have,' renders that 

 obscurity perceptibly greater. Then follow several pages 

 about the Power Loom as compared with the Loom of 

 Life, after which we have a further statement of how the 

 different life forces have acted successively on the simple 

 cell" embodying the first vital force,"and thus developed 

 the various organisms, (p. 71.) In order to give us a 

 concrete example of the theory at work, we have this 

 account of the origin of the whale, and the author may 

 well be complimented on his courage in attacking so 

 difticult a problem which almost brought Darwin him- 

 self to grief. But a greater than Darwin is here. Read 

 and wonder. 



" According to our theory, the life force of the whale 

 proceeds to fashion its skeleton on the type of its terres- 

 trial antecessor, and builds the structure to the junction 

 of the antecedent form with the new, and somewhat 

 beyond the first point of differentiation between them. 

 The bones of the hind limbs begin to be formed, but 

 forthwith the new force special to the whale, coming into 

 play, supersedes the forces that would have completed 

 the antecedent type, and the whale is produced." 



That is how it was done ! For brilliancy of invention 

 and clearness of exposition this is only comparable with 

 that fascinating account, by Adrianus Tollius, of the 

 origin of stone implements by natural causes, as quoted 

 by Mr. Tylor. 



•' He gives drawings of some ordinary stone axes and 

 hammers, and tells how the naturalists say that they are 



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