" Natural Selection " 45 



and has proved a barrier to the advance of scientific 

 investigation in so far as the laws of biology are 

 concerned. 



Messrs. Dewar and Finn in their recent work, " The 

 Making of Species," have gone far to show the insecure 

 position of much of the Darwinian hypothesis, and 

 especially of the hitherto accepted infallibility of the 

 law of natural selection, and as a necessary conse- 

 quence of the dogma of the " survival of the fittest." 

 But their lack of knowledge in regard to the operation 

 of the cannibal habit in nature has proved a stumbling- 

 block. Had they been aware of it, their arguments 

 would have been much more heavily weighted, and 

 their conclusions more trenchant and positive, and 

 would most certainly have altered absolutely their views 

 of the accepted creed of science in regard to evolution, 

 biology, and the whole Darwinian hypothesis. 



Yet, unaware as they are of the existence of this 

 habit as a law in nature, they mention, in one short 

 paragraph, that in some animals, as for example the 

 hyaena, the male occasionally devours his young ones, 

 and they state it as "a check on multiplication not 

 mentioned by Darwin, which is sometimes imposed 

 by the individuals of the species on one another." 

 Now here we have a glimmering of the operation of 

 that universal law which prevails in all prolific 

 species. One would have thought that, reflecting on 

 the non-increase of the elephant, and particularly 

 of the lion, which inhabits the same regions as the 

 hyasna, they would have extended the operation of 

 this law to the king of beasts, which certainly is never 

 destroyed by its enemies. But their explanation of 

 the non-increase of lions in Africa is " teething 

 troubles in the whelp." Surely this is absolutely 

 futile : such an explanation can only be given when one 

 is forced to attempt to explain the unexplainable. It is 



