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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



-while all those with " injurious " or inadaptive structures would perish. 

 This he termed the M Survival of the Fittest." 



5. Lastly, the survivors must leave offspring with the new structural 

 characters ; for unless they be hereditary, the new variety or species could 

 not be certain of a continued existence. Then through several generations, 

 the slight and favourable variations begun in the first generation would 

 accumulate till they would be recognised as constituting a " variety " ; 

 and a variety Darwin regarded as an " incipient species." 



Turning now to the " Origin of Species, &c," we find his theory based 

 on the preceding facts and suppositions thus expressed : — " Can it be 

 thought improbable . . . that variations useful in some way to each being 

 in the great and complex battle of life should occur in the course of many 

 successive generations ? If such do occur, can we doubt . . . that the 

 individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have 

 the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind ? On the other 

 hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious 

 would be rigidly destroyed ? This preservation of favourable individual 

 differences and variations and the destruction of those which are injurious 

 I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest."* This 

 passage may be called the Foundation of Darwinism. In order to make 

 the theory clear to his readers, he gives the following illustration : " If an 

 architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice without the use of 

 cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice 

 wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and 

 Hat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill and regard him as a 

 paramount power. 



" Now the fragments of stone, though indispensable to the architect, 

 bear to the edifice built by him the same relation [as a matter of fact there 

 is no relationship at all] which the fluctuating variations of each organic 

 being bear to the varied and admirable structures ultimately acquired by 

 its modified descendants." t 



With regard to the stones, Darwin says : " their shape may be strictly 

 said to be accidental " ; moreover, he overlooked two important facts. 

 First, it is quite impossible to build a "noble and commodious edifice" 

 out of unhewn and unprepared stones, and without any unprepared 

 mortar. Secondly, What takes the place of the architect's and builder's 

 skill in the construction of a living organism ? Prof. A. H. Church 

 invented the word "Directivity" to account for the fact that nature can 

 make many products in plants which he, as a chemist, can construct in 

 the laboratory, and so suggested this word as representing that property 

 of life which takes his place within the plant. Or, the question may 

 be put in Darwin's words : " If the architect would be a 1 paramount 

 power ' in constructing the house, What is the paramount power in the 

 Evolution of animals and plants'? " 



In the above illustration Darwin is considering the result of " favour- 

 able" variations represented by adaptable stones. To complete the 

 parallel, suppose the builder is careless and takes up stones at random, 

 using inadaptive as well as adaptive ones, what would happen? He tries 



* Origin of Species, &c, Oth ed., p. 62. 

 { An. and PI, under Dom. ii. p. 430. 



