THE KINSHIP OF LIFE. 19 
derful because they have taken place before our very 
eyes. To know the laws of heredity and to select domes- 
tic animals and plants so to reach our ends in accord- 
ance with these laws is indeed a creation. Artificial 
selection, says Youatt, is the “ magician’s 
wand” by which the breeder can sum- 
mon up whatever animal form he will. 
One might, according to Somerville, chalk out on the 
wall the form of sheep he most desired, and then de- 
velop it by attention to selection of parentage. The 
processes of heredity would bring this about by laws as 
unvarying as that by which a stream is forced to turn a 
mill. Professor Goodale tells us that were all our fruit 
trees destroyed and the species exterminated, they could 
all be won back again by the selective culture of wild 
pomes and berries. 
“Natural selection” is, however, an affirmative 
phrase for what is largely a negative 
process. ‘Natural extinction,” or the 
destruction of the unfittest, would some- 
times express the same idea better. 
No more striking statement of the universality of 
the struggle for existence and of its power to compel some 
form of selection—natural, of course—has ever been 
made than that given by Darwin in the Origin of 
Species. From this I quote: 
“TI use this term, struggle for existence, in a large 
and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one 
being on another, and including (which 
is more important) not only the life of 
the individual, but success in leaving 
progeny. Two canine animals, in atime of dearth, may 
be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get 
food and live. Buta plant on the edge of a desert is 
said to struggle for life against the drouth, though more 
Artificial 
selection. 
Natural 
selection. 
The struggle for 
existence. 
