2 2 Darwinism 



internecine strife. He supported his belief in the 

 struggle for existence by bringing forward the fact 

 that the various carnivora are very prolific, and that 

 the means by which their numbers are kept within due 

 bounds are so " obscure " that in no single instance 

 have they come within the scope of man's knowledge. 

 Darwin admits his ignorance of the method, and formu- 

 lates a hypothesis to get over the difficulty. 



Before going further at present in the direction of 

 showing how nature eliminates her excess, we may point 

 out that Paulin altogether denies that there is such 

 a thing as the " survival of the fittest " ; that what we 

 find is really the survival of the average, as all varia- 

 tions tend to be destroyed by the potent influence of 

 marriage. 1 Man can by a process of selection originate 

 new breeds, but he cannot make them permanent. 

 He must be unremitting in his selection, otherwise the 

 strong generic influence will be too much for him. 

 Man by selection has produced many varieties of 

 pigeon. In regard to this Darwin writes : " With 

 pigeons, however, we have another case, namely, the 

 occasional appearance in all the breeds of slaty blue 

 birds, with two black bars on the wing, white loins, and 

 a bar at the end of the tail, with the outer feathers 

 externally edged near their bases with white. As all 

 these marks are characteristic of the native stock 

 pigeon, we presume no one will doubt this is a case of 

 reversion, and not of a new yet analogous variation 

 appearing in the several breeds." Now we think it will 

 be agreed this is not a case of reversion at all ; the 

 explanation is that the generic characters have over- 

 come and replaced the individual variations, which 

 have by man's accumulation become the char- 

 acteristics of a breed derived from a form still extant, 



1 Marriage is here used in the scientific sense, meaning the union 

 of the sexes. 



