X OBITUARY 279 



even remotely approximated ; and he very soon 

 had his reward in the discovery " that selec- 

 tion was the keystone of man's success in mak- 

 ing useful races of animals and plants." (I. p. 

 83.) 



This was the first step in Darwin's progress, 

 though its immediate result was to bring him face 

 to face with a great difficulty. " But how selection 

 could be applied to organisms living in a state of 

 nature remained for some time a mvstery to me." 

 (I. p. 83.) 



The key to this mystery was furnished by the 

 accidental perusal of the famous essay of Malthus 

 "On Population" in the autumn of 1838. The 

 necessary result of unrestricted multiplication is 

 competition for the means of existence. The suc- 

 cess of one competitor involves the failure of the 

 rest, that is, their extinction ; and this " selection " 

 is dependent on the better adaptation of the suc- 

 cessful competitor to the conditions of the com- 

 petition. Variation occurs under natural, no less 

 than under artificial, conditions. Unrestricted 

 multiplication implies the competition of varieties 

 and the selection of those which are relatively best 

 adapted to the conditions. 



Neither Erasmus Darwin, nor Lamarck, had any 

 inkling of the possibility of this process of " natural 

 selection " ; and though it had been foreshadowed 

 by Wells in 1813, and more fully stated by 

 Matthew in 1831, the speculations of the latter 



47 



