376 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



to the "ever so little less perfect development ol 

 wing " on the part of the beetles that leave offspring 

 — that is to say, is admitting that he can give no 

 account of the matter — or else to the " indolent habit " 

 of the parent beetles which has led them to disuse their 

 wings, and hence gradually to lose them^-which is 

 neither more iior less than the " erroneous grounds of 

 opinion," and " well-known doctrine " of Lamaxck. 



For Mr. Darwin cannot mean that the fact of some 

 beetles being blown out to sea is the most important 

 means whereby certain other beetles come to have 

 smaller wings — that the Madeira beetles in fact come 

 to have smaller wings mainly because their large 

 winged uncles and aunts — ^go away. 



But if he does not mean this, what becomes of natural 

 selection ? 



For in this case we are left exactly where Lamarck 

 left us, and must hold that such beetles as have smaller 

 wings have them because the conditions of life or " cir- 

 cumstances " in which their parents were placed, ren- 

 dered it inconvenient to them to fly, and thus led them 

 to leave off using their wings. 



Granted, that if there had been nothing to take 

 unmodified beetles away, there would have been less 

 room and scope for the modified beetles; also that 

 unmodified beetles would have intermixed with the 

 modified, and impeded the prevalence of the modi- 

 fication. But anything else than such removal of 

 unmodified individuals would be contrary to our 

 hypothesis. The very essence of conditions of exist- 

 ence is that there ^wll ha something to take away 



