44 Canadian Record of Science. 



posed to accept his views. His main thesis was that 

 nature makes a selection out of the different animals and 

 plants that come into existence, there being a struggle for 

 continuance among them, with the result that the fittest 

 survive — namely, those forms which are best adapted to 

 the several situations in which they find themselves — and 

 these perpetuate the best modifications of an organic form, 

 leading progressively to improvements which, in time, 

 amount to the creation of a form so changed that it may 

 be denominated a new specific type. He laid great stress 

 on the variability, occasioned by the direct and indirect 

 influence of the external conditions of life, or by use or 

 disuse, along with the fact that many more seeds germinate 

 and plants start out in life than have room or opportunity 

 to grow to maturity. As a consequence, only a few 

 survive, and those few, he held, must possess a fitness for 

 the situation in which they continue ; and this special 

 quality of theirs, being exercised in constant competition, 

 gradually acquires greater strength and prominence, while 

 inherited qualities that are not used in competition 

 become less prominent through disuse. The ill-adapted 

 and less vigorous species or individuals perish in the 

 struggle. This theory, when applied and carried back- 

 wards, he suggested, might be held to account for the 

 derivation of all existing specific forms from one or more 

 primitive forms. 



Ahout the same time, Alfred Kussell Wallace, of Lon- 

 don, England, formulated similar conclusions. It is rather 

 a curious pschycological phenomenon, which finds frequent 

 parallels in history, that two minds working independently, 

 and even unknown to each other, should have arrived at 

 the same result about the same time, as if there were in- 

 fluences at work in the air, as we say, environing circum- 

 stances and conditions leading up to this issue. 



The idea of evolution, or the derivation of all existing 

 forms and modes out of older ones, was no new one. 



