1906. 
95 
THE STRUGGI.E FOR KXISTENCK. 
[Au Address to the Dublin Naturalists' Field Club, 9th January, 1906.] 
BY C. B. MOFFAT, B.A. 
In thanking the members of the Dublin Naturalists' Field 
Club for the very great honour they have done me in electing 
me their President, I cannot but say how deeply I feel conscious 
of the lack of many of those qualifications which have been 
conspicuous in former occupants of this chair. With particular 
sadness at the present moment we must all reflect on the 
disappearance from amongst us of that distinguished natura- 
list, who was our President till only a fortnight ago, when we 
learned with pain that Mr. Burbidge was no more. A few 
weeks earlier death had deprived the Club of another of its 
most valued and distingtiished members, Mr. Edward 
Williams, whose wonderful stores of knowledge were always 
placed so freely at the disposal of his brother-naturalists that 
it would be hard to estimate what Irish zoology owes him. 
We meet to-night under a recent sense of both these losses, a 
sense so keen that I know further words from me would be 
superfluous on the subject ; for I am sure that the Dublin 
Naturalists' Field Club never before lost two such eminent 
members within so short a time. 
The study of natural history has now become so vast and so 
complicated that it is impossible to take a bird's-eye view of 
the field in the hope of arriving at any general conclusions 
without a great risk of overlooking some really vital fact. The 
field of the specialist, however limited, is at least clear ; but on 
the question to which I would seek to direct attention to-night, 
the difficulty is want of clearness. I have no wish to propound 
theories; but to draw attention to the need for closer study to 
avoid a confusion which seems to me to be creeping into our 
conceptions of the phenomena on which the process of evolu- 
tion depends. 
For this purpose, I take the accepted fact of the existence 
throtighout nature .of a struggle for existence ; and I ask for a 
clear conception of what that fact means. To explain the 
meaning of my question I propose to pass in review a few of 
