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forth, when God beheld and drove asunder the nations, to render the different 
races of mankind suited to their various abodes ; there is no such “ selection” 
now. Every one knows that the children of English parents degenerate in 
India, probably also in Australia. The French, according to their own 
calculations, would soon die out in Algeria if left without fresh settlers. I 
hope I shall be pardoned for suggesting that the vigorous arterial circulation 
suited to the Teutonic race when called to populate the damp forests and 
marshes of ancient Europe, is not compatible with the powerful overstimulus 
of sunlight in America. From some less obvious cause it is not thought 
that the Spaniard thrives well in South America ; and yet, if we judge 
by the success of these nations in taking possession of these countries, 
they are the fittest to survive. 
If we turn to the animal creation, I suppose every one will admit that the 
fittest do not survive. If we study the Assyrian sculpture or the Egyptian 
records, we find more noble, more varied, and higher types of animal life, than 
any that now exist in those ; and if we judge of fitness by aptness for 
domesticity, we learn that the Egyptians had succeeded in making useful to 
themselves, more than the few animals which we either do not now possess, or 
at least not as tamed creatures. If we go back a certain number of years, 
we find by the records of the past that man contended with and subdued 
animals of giant bulk and proportions, from which, if armed only with flints, 
he would, I suspect, now be glad to flee. (See Job xli. 30, original.) 
There has been no improvement in the vegetable creation since the days 
when Solomon spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even 
unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall. The only change has been 
that the fittest have not survived. The choice balsam has as much perished 
from Jericho as has the reem (unicorn) from the Jordan. The apples of 
Sodom and the grapes of Gomorrah may still be referred to as examples of 
“ the survival of the fittest,” but the vineyards have perished from Engedi, 
and “ the clusters of Camphire ” might be difficult to meet with. (Canticles 
i. 14.) The cedars of Lebanon have for the most part fallen to supply 
materials for the ships of Tarshish, as their congeners the deodars of the 
Himalayas have been hewn down, to a large extent I fear, in order to supply 
sleepers for railways. The Americans begin to mourn over their ravaged 
forests ; and everywhere man has been destroying the beauty and even the 
utility of creation. Many plants and animals have perished ; and “ natural 
selection ” has not furnished us with one new species of either. In 3,000 years 
this power has done literally nothing. 
Mr. Lea thinks that I either misapprehend or misrepresent “ the survival 
of the fittest.” This is not the case, for I see it all around me ; but what is 
the result ? — simply that in this contest “ the big battalions” do not always 
have their own way. The result of the struggle is that an infinite variety 
survive, and if you say these are the fittest to survive, you simply enunciate 
the proposition that the combination of circumstances happens to have 
favoured these the most. 
At this season of the year (May) the varied kinds of grass and herbage seem 
emulously engaged in solving the problem “ which shall survive.” Moreover, 
