SELECTION: ORGANIC AND SOCIAL 185 



His general line of thought was something Hke 

 this. The gardener and the breeder watch for 

 changes or variations ; they select for propagation 

 those variants that please them, keeping all others 

 away ; gradually they estabhsh new varieties that 

 breed true. So it is in nature, Darwin said, where 

 variations are continually cropping up. But what 

 takes the place of the breeder ? Nature's sifting 

 in the struggle for existence. Man has done much 

 in' a short time ; what may Nature not have 

 done in a long time ? As has often been pointed 

 out, there are some differences in detail between 

 artificial and natural selection, but the essential 

 features are the same. 



" The theory of natural selection," Mr. Wallace 

 writes,' " commonly called Darwinism, is one of 

 the most simple and easy of comprehension in the 

 whole range of science ; yet, after fifty years of 

 continuous exposition and study, there is perhaps 

 none that is so widely and persistently misunder- 

 stood." Let us therefore hnger over it. 



When one visits that scientific Aladdin's cave 

 called the British Museum (Natural History), one 

 is impressed, on entering, by the statue of Darwin, 

 and from it the eye falls to a tree full of pigeons 

 with the wild rock-dove {Columba livia) as a centre, 

 and on the branches round about Pouters and 

 Carriers, Tumblers and Trumpeters, Jacobins and 

 Fantails, and other breeds. That case of pigeons 

 is a Darwinian diagram, for Darwin chose these 

 birds for special study — and they led him to a 

 goal as famous as Ararat. There are over two 

 hundred very well-marked breeds of domestic 

 pigeons, and there are at least ten that would be 



^ Fortnightly Review (March 1909), p. 411, 



