(>*) 



appetency or predilection. There is, it seems to me, 

 undoubtedly something in the male organization of 

 a special and sexual nature, which of its own vital force 

 develops the remarkable male peculiarities so commonly 

 seen, and of no imaginable use to that sex. In as far 

 as these peculiarities show a great vital power, they 

 point out to us the finest and strongest individuals of 

 the sex, and show us which of them would most 

 certainly appropriate to themselves the best and 

 greatest number of females, and leave behind them the 

 strongest and greatest number of progeny. And here 

 would come in, as it appears to me, the proper application 

 of Darwin's theory of natural selection ; for the 

 possessors of greatest vital power being those most fre- 

 quently produced and reproduced, the external signs of 

 it would go on developing in an ever-increasing 

 exaggeration, only to be checked where it really became 

 detrimental in some respect or other to the individual.' 

 Probably some modification would now be necessary as 

 expressed in this view by my father and by Wallace j 

 but it was a clear advance on Darwin's own position. 

 Some later correspondence, however, with Darwin in 

 1874, when the latter consulted my father with refer- 

 ence to the small size of male as compared with female 

 spiders, shows that Darwin held to his own view of 

 sexual selection. 



In a paper on c New and Rare British Spiders ' pub- 

 lished in 1884, my father called attention to the group 



