218 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
ers with the races of men who use them, and with them 
go the domesticated animals and plants and the weeds 
and vermin man has brought unwillingly into relations 
of domination. 
The process of natural selection has been summed 
up in the phrase “survival of the fittest.” This, how- 
ever, tells only part of the story. “ Sur- 
vival of the existing” in many cases 
covers more of the truth. For in hosts 
of cases the survival of characters rests not on any spe- 
cial usefulness or fitness, but on the fact that individuals 
possessing these characters have inhabited or invaded 
a certain area, The principle of utility explains sur- 
vivals among competing structures. It rarely accounts 
for qualities associated with geographic distribution. 
The nature of the animals which first colonize a dis- 
trict must determine what the future fauna shall be. 
From their specific characters, which are neither useful 
nor harmful, will be derived for the most part the spe- 
cific characters of their successors, 
It is not essential to the meadow lark that he should 
have a black blotch on the breast or the outer tail- 
feather white. Yet all meadow larks have these charac- 
ters just as all shore larks have the tiny plume behind 
the ear. Those characters of the parent stock, which 
may be harmful in the new relations, will be eliminated 
by natural selection. “Those especially helpful will be 
intensified and modified, but the great body of charac- 
ters, the marks by which we know the species, will be 
neither helpful nor hurtful. These will be meaningless 
streaks and spots, variations in size of parts, peculiar 
relations of scales or hair or feathers, little matters 
which can neither help nor hurt, but which have all the 
persistence heredity can give. 
The species of animals change with space and change 
The survival of 
the existing. 
