Variation and Natural Selection. 79 



tory individuals or he may reject the most unsatisfactory. 

 • We may term the former process selection, the latter 

 elwiination. Suppose that a gardener is dealing with a 

 bed of geraniums. He may either pick out first the best, 

 then the second best, then the third, and so on, until he 

 has selected as many as he wishes to preserve. Or, on 

 the other hand, he may weed out first the worst, then in 

 succession other unsatisfactory stocks, until, by eliminating 

 the failures, he has a residue of sufficiently satisfactory 

 flowers. Now, I think it is clear that, even if the ultimate 

 result is the same (if, that is to say, he selects the twenty 

 best, or eliminates all but the twenty best), the method of 

 procedure is in the two cases different. Selection is applied 

 at one end of the scale, elimination at the other. There is 

 a difference in method in picking out the wheat-grains (like 

 a sparrow) and scattering the chaff by the wind. 



Under nature both methods are operative, but in very 

 different degrees. Although the insect may select the 

 brightest flowers, or the hen-bird the gaudiest or most 

 tuneful mate, the survival of the fittest under nature is in 

 the main the net result of the slow and gradual process of 

 the elimination of the unfit.* The best-adapted are not, 

 save in exceptional cases, selected ; but the ill-adapted are 

 weeded out and eliminated. And this distinction seems to 

 me of sufficient importance to justify my suggestion that 

 natural selection be subdivided under two heads — natural 

 elimination, of widespread occurrence throughout the 

 animal world ; and selection proper, involving the element 

 of individual or special choice. 



The term "natural elimination" for the major factor 

 serves definitely to connect the natural process with that 

 struggle for existence out of which it arises. The struggle 

 for existence is indeed the reaction of the organic world 

 called forth by the action of natural elimination. Organisms 

 are tending to increase in geometrical ratio. There is not 



* I may here draw attention to the fact that the bats whose wing-bone 

 measurements were given above are those which have so far survived and 

 escaped such elimination as is now in progress. 



