
Suly 20, 1871 | 
thorough acquaintance with all that has been written on his sub- 
ject, as well as his intimate correspondence with the principal 
echinologists, is a sufficient guarantee that no important memoir 
(such as Wright’s monograph) could have escaped him. Any- 
one who will take the trouble of turning to Cotteau’s work (p. 
III) will find, under Pseudodiadema hemisphericum, a notice of 
Dr. Wright's figure of the same species (so much superior, with 
many others, to Cotteau’s?) and a reference to his description. 
Nor is this an isolated case. Throughout the work M. Cotteau 
discusses and criticises more or less the results of this very mono- 
graph, said to have been overlooked by him. The mistake 
Cotteau is accused of making of assigning to Desor instead of 
Agassiz the specific name of Pseudodiadema hemisphericum 
is entirely unfounded. Referring again to p. III., we 
find, as a synonym, Diadema hemisphericum Agass. M. 
Cotteau, like many continental and American writers, does 
not interpret the notation of species as is required by the laws of 
the British Association, but for that reason he should not be 
accused of committing mistakes which his own writings show him 
notto have committed. M. Cotteau, in common with others, looks 
upon nomenclature simply as a matter of registration ; and when 
M. Desor transfers to Pseudodiadema the Diadema hemuspheri- 
cum Agass., M. Cotteau writes, therefore, Pseudodiadema hemts- 
phericum Desor, and not Agassiz ; he may be wrong, according 
to the principles of the writer in NATURE, but he has not, either 
in this instance or in the other cases alluded to, committed a 
mistake through ignorance of the subject. A, AGAssIz 
Mr. Howorth on Darwinism 
Mr. Howorth sneers at ‘‘ Survival of the Fittest” as an 
“identical expression ” which ‘‘ might have suggested itself even 
to a child,” an axiom, in short, of which the truth cannot be 
disputed. This is satisfactory ; but it is strange that he did not 
apply this axiom to his own theory, and see how they agreed to- 
gether. He would probably admit, as another discovery ‘‘ that 
might have suggested itself to a child,” that as @ 7/e the entire 
offspring of each animal or plant, except the one or two neces- 
sary to replace the parents, die before they produce offspring 
(this has never been denied since I put it prominently forward 
thirreen years ago). He would further admit, I have little 
doubt, that a great majority of animals and plants produce 
during their lifetime from ten to a thousand offspring, so that 
fifty will be a low average, but the exact number is of no impor- 
tance. Forty-nine. therefore, of every fifty individuals born, 
die before reaching maturity ; the fiftieth survives because it is 
‘best fitted to survive,” because it has conquered in the struggle 
for existence. Will Mr. Howorth also admit as self-evident, 
that this one survivor in fifty is healthy, vigorous, and well 
nourished, not sickly, weak, or half-starved? If he maintains 
that it is the latter, I shall ask him to prove it; if the former, 
then what becomes of his theory as an argument against Natural 
Selection? For, admitting as a possibility that his theory of the 
greater fecundity of the weak, &c., is true, how are these weak 
or sickly parents to provide for and bring up to maturity their 
offspring, and how are the offspring themselves (undoubtedly 
less vigorous than the offspring of strong and healthy parents) 
to maintain themselves? The one in fifty who survives to leave 
descendants will inevitably be the strong and healthy offspring 
of strong and healthy parents ; the forty-nine who die will com- 
prise the weaker and less healihy offspring of weak and sickly 
parents ; so that, as Mr. Darwin and myself have long ago 
shown, the number of offspring produced is, 77 ost cases, the 
least important of the factors in determining the continuance of 
a species. 
I have thought it better to go thus into the heart of the question, 
rather than defend myself from the charge of dogmatism, for 
stating as a fact that the most vigorous plants and animals are 
the most fertile. I repeat the statement, however, referring to 
Mr. Darwin's observations, and especially to those in which he 
demonstrates by experiment that cross-breeding produces the most 
vigorous and luxuriant plants, which again produce by far the 
largest quantity of seed. The facts that wild animals and plants 
are, as a rule, healthy and vigorous, that the head of the herd is 
the strongest bull, and that weak and sickly carnivora are rarely 
found because they must inevitably starve to death, sufficiently 
refute Mr. Howorth’s theory as against Natural Selection. If 
he can point to any district upon the earth where the animals and 
plants are in a state of chronic debility, disease, and starvation, 
NATURE 


221 

I may admit that there his theory holds good ; but such a dis- 
trict has not yet come under my observation, or, as far as I am 
aware of, been recorded by any traveller. 
I still maintain (Prof. Jowett’s authority notwithstanding) that 
the phrase ‘‘ Persistence of the Stronger” does not truly represent 
“ Natural Selection” or the struggle for existence ;” and, though 
it mey often be true, is not the whole truth. The arguments of 
Mr. Howorth from the history of savages will, I think, not have 
much weight, if we may take as an example his putting together 
as cause and effect the extinction of the Hottentots and their 
now obtaining enough to eat. ALFRED R, WALLACE 

Mr. ALFRED WALLACE directs attention to the gross error 
of supposing that ‘‘the struggle for existence means the per- 
sistence of the stronger,” and correctly stigmatises this view of 
Mr. Howorth’s ‘fa pure misrepresentation.” 
It is, as Mr. Wallace remarks, very curious and even Iudi- 
crous, after all that has been said and written upon the matter, 
that anyone should fail to recognise the advantages to their pos- 
sessor of ‘‘obscure colours,” ‘‘cunning,” ‘‘nauseousness,” 
‘‘bad odour,” and other qualities superior to strength alone. 
The creature having these properties, at last brought to perfection 
through the operation of natural selection, acting through count- 
less generations, will assuredly have the advantage in the battle 
of life over its less fortunate neighbours. It will survive in the 
struggle for existence. Having survived, is it not better that it 
should at once teach the world the law of its survival, and pro- 
claim itself the fittest to survive, than that it should remain silent 
until those whom it has destroyed may rise from the dead and 
admit that their doom was deserved because they were not fit to 
live? LIONEL S, BEALE 
Mr. Howor tH, it seems to me, has not chosen a very favour- 
able time for so strongly maintaining the truth of Mr. Double- 
day’s theory, seeing that the recent census has shown that the 
population of Engiand has increased not only with an increment 
absolutely greater than that shown by any previous census, but 
also—and this is still more important—with an increase propor- 
tionally greater than during the last decade. Yet never, surely, 
has luxury been so prevalent among us as during these last ten 
years. The evidence thus afforded will perhaps be deemed more 
conclusive than the argument of Mr. J. S. Mill, who invites those 
who may be inclined to accept Mr. Doubleday’s opinions ‘to 
look through a volume of the Peerage, and observe the enormous 
families almost universal in that class ; or call to mind the large 
families of the English clergy, and generally of the middle classes 
of England” (“ Principles of Political Economy,” bk. 1, ch. x., 
note). Mr, Howorth, however, states that ‘‘ the classes among 
us who teem with children are not the well-to-do and the com- 
fortable.” If this statement were absolutely true, it wou'd be of 
little service to Mr. Howorth, since it is in the classes referred 
to that prudential restraint acts with the greatest force, and the 
effects of this restraint, both direct and indirect, would have to 
be taken into account before his conclusion could be admitted. 
He further asserts that ‘‘a state of debility of the population in- 
duces fertility,” since ‘‘ where mortality is the greatest there is 
much the greatest fecundity.” That births should be most 
numerous where the mortality is greatest, requires for its explana- 
tion no hypothesis respecting the fertilising power of debility. 
“The fact,” says Malthus, “may be accounted for without re- 
sorting to so strange a supposition as that the fruitfulness of 
women should vary inversely as their health. When a 
great mortality takes place, a proportional number of births im- 
mediately ensues, owing both to the greater number of yearly 
marriages from the increased demand for labour, and the greater 
fecundity of each marriage from being contracted at an earlier, 
and naturally more prolific, age” (vol. i., pp. 472, 473, 5th edit.), 
Man’s reproductive power is always in civilised life more or less 
checked, and ready to be more or less exercised in proportion to 
the lessening by death of the restraining pressure. 
THOMAS TYLER 
Mr. WALLACE, in replying to Mr. Howorth’s objections to 
the theory of Natural Selection, points out that that gentleman 
first misrepresents Darwinism, and that having done so he does 
not employ the distorted doctrine as premisses to a further con- 
