318 



NATUEAL SELECTION. 



[Ch. XXXVII, 



may 

 must 



sists 



m 



the 



maintainin 



season of the year when food is scarcest. 



Term ' Natural Selection ' or ' Survival of the fittest: 

 Herbert Spencer has proposed to substitute for ' ISTatural 



at that 



Mr 



term 



some 



because the various causes which in the natural world enable 

 one variety or race to prevail over another, act according' 

 to fixed laws, and do not imply a conscious choice like the 



selection of the breeder. 



metapho 



itimate 



ing us of the close analogy which exists between the manner 

 in which new races are formed by man and the way in which 

 it is supposed by Darwin and Wallace that they are slowly 

 produced by nature. Professor Huxley in his comments on 

 this subject observes, that the winds and waves of the Bay of 

 Biscay in the district called the Landes near Bordeaux have 

 spread out over a wide area great heaps of sand all the grain 

 of which are below a certain size. These grains have been 

 separated from the larger gravel with as much precision as 

 if by the aid of a sieve. That which the wind and the sea 

 are to a sandy beach the sum of all the influences which we 

 term the conditions of existence is to living organisms. The 

 weak are sifted out from the strong. A frosty night selects 

 the hardy plants in a plantation from among the tender ones 

 as effectually as if the intelligence of a gardener had been 



Number of 



ganisms down.f 



of a species depends.~lf the reader will reflect on the changes 

 in the earth's physical geography and cKmate which were 

 alluded to in the first volume (Chapters XI. and XII.), as 

 having occurred in the course of geological periods, he will 

 not fail to perceive that the new conditions to which plants 

 and animals inhabiting any given province must be exposed 

 will be far more important in the aggregate than the change 



Principles of Biology, p. 444. 

 t Nat. Hist. EcY. ' On Origin of Species,' p. 578. 



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