CHAP. IV 



Natural Selection. 



65 



the native inhabitants are now so perfectly adapted to each other 

 and to the physical conditions under which they. live, that none of 

 them could be still better adapted or improved ; for in all countries, 

 the natives have been so far conquered by naturalised productions, 

 that they have allowed some foreigners to take firm possession of 

 the land. And as foreigners have thus in every country beaten 

 some of the natives, we may safely conclude that the natives might 

 have been modified with advantage, so as to have better resisted the 

 intruders. 



As man can produce, and certainly has produced, a great result 

 by his methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not 

 natural selection effect ? Man can act only on external and visible 

 characters : Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the natural 

 preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances, 

 except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can act on 

 every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, 

 on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own 

 good : Nature only for that of the being which she tends. Every 

 selected character is fully exercised by her, as is implied by the fact 

 of their selection. Man keeps the natives of many climates in the 

 same country ; he seldom exercises each selected character in some 

 peculiar and fitting manner ; he feeds a long and a short beaked 

 pigeon on the same food; he does not exercise a long-backed or 

 long-legged quadruped in any peculiar manner ; he exposes sheep 

 with long and short wool to the same climate. He does not allow 

 the most vigorous males to struggle for the females. He does not 

 rigidly destroy all inferior animals, but protects during each varying 

 season, as far as lies in his power, all his productions. He often 

 begins his selection by some half-monstrous form ; or at least by 

 some modification prominent enough to catch the eye or to be 

 plainly useful to him. Under nature, the slightest differences of 

 structure or constitution may well turn the nicely-balanced scale in 

 the struggle for life, and so be preserved. How fleeting are the 

 wishes and efforts of man ! how short his time ! and consequently 

 how poor will be his results, compared with those accumulated by 

 Nature during whole geological periods ! Can we wonder, then, that 

 Nature's productions should be far " truer" in character than man's 

 productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the 

 most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp 

 ot tar higher workmanship ? 



It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and 

 hour y scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations- 

 ejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are 



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