178 Darwin and Romanes dealt with. 



fittest," if it is to proceed along the same course as it 

 has already done, will at last end, mark you, in no 

 survival at all — female cuckoos of our common species 

 will have died out. Will that then be claimed by you 

 as the final victory of your survival of the fittest, 

 when even the fittest, under stress of the application 

 of your own principles, have vanished — vanished 

 utterly ? If the fittest of one species that alone sur- 

 vive are males, then you logically prove your case ; 

 biologically, where are you ? You need, surely, very 

 much to mend your definitions or your premises 

 somehow ! The ragnarok of the cuckoos — the last 

 band of the migrating males — come to this country 

 for no purpose, or worse than no purpose, unaccom- 

 panied with females, and doomed to wander over 

 earth without " an object or an aim," will be the final 

 proof that, after all, "survival of the fittest" uni- 

 versally obtains, though whole races are without the 

 fittest or the fit, despite that they have shown such 

 resources, put such a strain on themselves in depart- 

 ing from normal principles of nature, that they died — 

 died, mark you — by the very efforts which, according 

 to you, if you have any basis at all, should have made 

 them survive and increase ! \A'here the " fittest " 

 are all males, or gradually tend to be, you have 

 surely reached the rediictio ad absurdum of your 

 theory, by proving the fittest, after all, the unfit. 



If the males have had no share whatever in the 

 efforts that have led to the lessening of the egg, or to 

 the colouring of it, and if " the remarkable instinct 

 which leads some species of cuckoos and crow black- 

 birds" to lay their eggs in the nests of other species 



* " Crow " is distinctly printed by Dr. Brooks here, but, of 

 course, it should be cow-blackbirds. 



