254 



EEV. PROF. G. HENSLOW^ M.A., F.L.S., 



first edition (p. 102): "Within a confined area, with some place 

 in its polity not so perfectly occupied as might be, natural 

 selection will always tend to preserve all the individuals 

 varying in the right direction." In the sixth edition (p. 80) 

 this passage runs as follows after the word "polity" : "All the 

 individuals varying in the right direction, though in different 

 degrees, will tend to be preserved." 



In his letter to Professor Moritz Wagner he wrote (1876) : 

 " In my opinion the greatest error which I have committed has 

 been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the 

 environment, i.e., food, climate, etc., independently of Natural 

 Selection. . . . When I wrote the Origin and for some 

 years afterwards, I could find little good evidence of the direct 

 action of the environment ; now there is a large body of 

 evidence."* 



There would seem to be no doubt that it was in consequence 

 of his ecological investigations into the uses involving adap- 

 tations of structures for special purposes, e.g., of climbing, insect 

 fertilisation, etc., that led him to this important change of 

 view. 



Darwin alludes to " all the individuals (say of plant seedlings) 

 varying alike." Such is always the case and none have the 

 requisite " injurious characters "f for natural selection to 

 eliminate. What, then, supplies its supposed use in destroying 

 the vast majority of offspring ? It is what Darwin called 

 " fortuitous destruction." Of a million or more eggs of an 

 oyster. Sir E. Kay Lankester tells us that perhaps one only is 

 " lucky enough " to fall on a suitable spot whereon to grow into 

 an oyster ; all the rest are eaten by fishes, etc., or fall on un- 

 suitable ground. It is obvious, therefore, that there can be 

 no " fittest to survive." And if the above be true of one oyster, 

 we are led to infer that it is true of all. 



Yet there are varieties among oysters, e.g., in the Baltic with 

 less salt in the water the shell assumes a different form. There 

 are also small and large varieties ; presumably, therefore, they 

 were the " definite results " of the direct action of different 

 environments, including different kinds of food. 



This alternative explanation of Darwin's has been amply 

 established as the true one.t The theory of " Natural 



^ Life and Letters, III, p. 159. 



+ Origin, etc., sixth edition, p. 64. " Injurious " means " inadaptive." 

 % I called it the True Darwinism, see The Nineteenth Century, Nov., 

 1906, p. 795. 



