FERTILISATION AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 335 



wliorl. The phrase " natural selection " will therefore have 

 been noticed as conspicuous by its absence throughout this 

 book. This is not because I would in the least deny the 

 fact that vast numbers of seedlings perish while others sur- 

 vive through that form which I have called " constitutional 

 selection," which are thus " selected," and arrive at the 

 flowering and fruiting stages ; and, again, that of these latter 

 many may set no seed through the neglect of insects, etc., and 

 so perish entirely and leave no offspring, while others again 

 survive and are selected. Why, however, I do not refer any 

 particular structure to the action of natural selection is 

 because I have always felt or perceived a danger in doing so. 

 Natural selection is, as thus styled, an abstraction; and as 

 long as we hide our ignorance of its concrete representatives, 

 that is to say, the real causes at work to induce a change, we 

 may fancy we understand all about it, while we may be in 

 reality in profound ignorance. 



Professor Huxley remarked, in his lectures on the Origin 

 of Species, that what we want is " a good theory of varia- 

 tion." It is in the attempt to till this hiatus that I have, 

 step by step throughout this book, preferred to give what 

 seemed to me a direct cause, mechanical, physiological, 

 climatal, etc., for every structure ; which may bring us 

 nearer to a comprehension of the direct interaction of cause 

 and effect than the vague term " natural selection " seems 

 capable of doing. Thus, to take an example, Miiller refers 

 the loss of the fifth stamen in Labiates to natural selection, 

 but makes no statement hoiv he supposes selection to have 

 done it. On the other hand, I would prefer to attribute its 

 absence to atrophy, in compensation with the hypertrophy 

 of the corolla on the posterior side. I may be wrong, of 

 course, but at all events I give a reasonable cause, which is 

 a fertile one in bringing about alterations in the structure 



