20G THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [Chap. 



hardly the animals to present us in a state of nature, with 

 an extraordinary and exceptional sensitiveness in such 

 matters. 



To take an altogether different case. Care of, and ten- 

 derness toward, the aged and infirm are actions on all hands 

 admitted to be "right; " but it is difficult to see how such 

 actions could ever have been so useful to a connnunity as 

 to have been seized on and developed by the exclusive ac- 

 tion of the law of the "survival of the fittest." On the 

 contrary, it seems probable that on strict utilitarian princi- 

 ples the rigid political economy of Tierra del Fuego would 

 have been eminently favored and diffused by the impartial 

 action of "Natural Selection" alone. B}'^ the rigid politi- 

 cal economy referred to, is meant that destruction and utili- 

 zation of "useless mouths" which Mr. Darwin himself de- 

 scribes in his highly interesting " Journal of Researches." " 

 He says: "It is certainly true, that Avhen pressed in win- 

 ter by hunger, they kill and devour their old women before 

 they kill their dogs. The boy being asked why they 

 did this, answered : * Doggies catch otters, old woman no.' 

 They often run awny into the mountains, but they are pur- 

 sued by the men and brought back to the slaughter-house 

 at their own firesides." JNIr. Edward Bartlett, who has 

 recently returned from the Amazons, reports that at one 

 Indian village where the cholera made its appearance, the 

 whole population immediately dispersed into the woods, 

 leaving the sick to perish uncared for and alone. Now, had 

 the Indians remained, undoubtedly far more would have 

 died; as doubtless, in Tierra del Fuego, the d(!struclion of 

 the comparatively useless old women has often been the 

 means of preserving the healthy and reproductive young. 

 Such acts surely must be greatly favored by the stc^rn and 

 unrelenting action of exclusive " Natural Selection." 



In the same way that admiration which all feel for acts 



« See 2d edit., vol. i., p. 214. 



