cle he did not "appreciate how rarely single variations, whether slight or strongly marked, could be perpetuated."

The North British Review (speaking of the supposition that a species is changed by the survival of a few individuals in a century through a similar and favorable variation) says: "It is very difficult to see how this can be accomplished, even when the variation is eminently favorable indeed; and still more difficult when the advantage gained is very slight, as must generally be the case. The advantage, whatever it may be, is utterly out-balanced by numerical inferiority. A million creatures are born; ten thousand survive to produce offspring. One of the million has twice as good a chance as any other of surviving; but the chances are fifty to one against the gifted individuals being one of the hundred survivors. No doubt the chances are twice as great against any one other individual, but this does not prevent their being enormously in favor of some average individual. However slight the advantage may be, if it is shared by half the individuals produced, it will probably be present in at least fifty-one of the survivors, and in a larger proportion of their offspring; but the chances are against the preservation of any one 'sport' (i. e., sudden, marked variation) in a numerous tribe. The vague use of an imperfectly-understood doctrine of chance has led Darwinian supporters, first, to confuse the two cases above distinguished; and, secondly, to imagine that a very slight balance in favor of some individual sport must lead to its perpetuation. All that can be said is that in the above example the favored sport would be preserved once in fifty times. Let us consider what will be its influence on the main stock when preserved. It will breed and have a progeny of say 100; now this progeny will, on the whole, be intermediate between the average individual and the sport. The odds in favor of one of this generation of the new breed will be, say one and a half to one, as compared with the

average individual; the odds in their favor will, therefore, be less than that of their parents; but owing to their greater number, the chances are that about one and a half of them would survive. Unless these breed together, a most improbable event, their progeny would again approach the average individual; there would be 150 of them, and their superiority would be, say in the ratio of one in a quarter to one; the probability would now be that nearly two of them would survive, and have 200 children, with an eighth superiority. Rather more than two of these would survive; but the superiority would again dwindle, until after a few generations it would no longer be observed, and would count for no more in the struggle for life than any of the hundred trifling advantages which occur in the ordinary organs. An illustration will bring this conception home. Suppose a white man to have been wrecked on an island inhabited by negroes, and to have established himself in friendly relations with a powerful tribe, whose customs he has learned. Suppose him to possess the physical strength, energy, and ability of a dominant white race, and let the food and climate of the island suit his constitution ; grant him every advantage which we can conceive a white to possess over the native; concede that in the struggle for existence his chance of a long life will be much superior to that of the native chiefs; yet from all these admissions, there does not follow the conclusion that, after a limited or unlimited number of generations, the inhabitants of the island will be white. Our shipwrecked hero would probably become king; he would kill a great many blacks in the struggle for existence; he would have a great many wives and children.” "In the first generation there will be some dozens of intelligent young mulattoes, much superior in average intelligence to the negroes. We might expect the throne for some generations to be occupied by a more or less yellow king; but can any one believe that the whole

island will gradually acquire a white, or even a yellow, population?"

00

“Darwin says that in the struggle for life a grain may turn the balance in favor of a given structure, which will then be preserved. But one of the weights in the scale of Nature is due to the number of a given tribe. Let there be 7,000 A's and 7,000 B's, representing two varieties of a given animal, and let all the B's, in virtue of a slight difference of structure, have the better chance of life by part. We must allow that there is a slight probability that the descendants of B will supplant the descendants of A; but let there be only 7,001 A's against 7,000 B's at first, and the chances are once more equal, while if there be 7,002 A's to start, the odds would be laid on the A's. True, they stand a greater chance of being killed; but then they can better afford to be killed. The grain will only turn the scales when these are very nicely balanced, and an advantage in numbers counts for weight, even as an advantage in struct

ure.

As the numbers of the favored variety diminish, so must its relative advantages increase, if the chance of its existence is to surpass the chance of its extinction, until hardly any conceivable advantage would enable the descendants of a single pair to exterminate the descendants of many thousands if they and their descendants are supposed to breed freely with the inferior variety, and so gradually lose their ascendency.”

Mr. Darwin himself says of the article quoted: "The justice of these remarks cannot, I think, be disputed. If, for instance, a bird of some kind could procure its food more easily by having its beak curved, and if one were born with its beak strongly curved, and which consequently flourished, nevertheless there would be a very poor chance of this one individual perpetuating its kind to the exclusion of the common form." This admission seems almost to amount to a change of front in the face of the enemy!

These remarks have been quoted at length because they so greatly intensify the difficulties brought forward in this chapter. If the most favorable variations have to contend with such difficulties, what must be thought as to the chance of preservation of the slightly-displaced eye in a sole or of the incipient development of baleen in a whale ?

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.

It has been here contended that a certain few facts, out of many which might have been brought forward, are inconsistent with the origination of species by "Natural Selection" only or mainly.

Mr. Darwin's theory requires minute, indefinite, fortuitous variations of all parts in all directions, and he insists that the sole operation of "Natural Selection" upon such is sufficient to account for the great majority of organic forms, with their most complicated structures, intricate mutual adaptations, and delicate adjustments.

To this conception has been opposed the difficulties presented by such a structure as the form of the giraffe, which ought not to have been the solitary structure it is; also the minute beginnings and the last refinements of protective mimicry equally difficult or rather impossible to account for by "Natural Selection." Again, the difficulty as to the heads of flat-fishes has been insisted on, as also the origin, and at the same time the constancy, of the limbs of the highest animals. Reference has also been made to the whalebone of whales, and to the impossibility of understanding its origin through "Natural Selection" only; the same as regards the infant kangaroo, with its singular deficiency of power compensated for by maternal structures on the one hand, to which its own breathing-organs bear direct relation on the other. Again, the delicate and complex pedicellariæ of Echinoderms, with a certain process of development (through a secondary larva) found in that class,

4

together with certain other exceptional modes of development, have been brought forward. The development of color in certain apes, the hood of the cobra, and the rattle of the rattlesnake, have also been cited. Again, difficulties as to the process of formation of the eye and ear, and as to the fully-developed condition of those complex organs, as well as of the voice, have been considered. The beauty of certain shell-fish; the wonderful adaptations of structure, and variety of form and resemblance, found in orchids; together with the complex habits and social conditions of certain ants, have been hastily passed in review. When all these complications are duly weighed and considered, and when it is borne in mind how necessary it is for the permanence of a new variety that many individuals in each case should be simultaneously modified, the cumulative argument seems irresistible.

The author of this book can say that, though by no means disposed originally to dissent from the theory of "Natural Selection," if only its difficulties could be solved, he has found each successive year that deeper consideration and more careful examination have more and more brought home to him the inadequacy of Mr. Darwin's theory to account for the preservation and intensification of incipient, specific, and generic characters. That minute, fortuitous, and indefinite variations could have brought about such special forms and modifications as have been enumerated in this chapter, seems to contradict not imagination, but reason.

That either many individuals among a species of butterfly should be simultaneously preserved through a similar accidental and minute variation in one definite direction, when variations in many other directions would also preserve; or that one or two so varying should succeed in supplanting the progeny of thousands of other individuals, and that this should by no other cause be carried so far as to produce the appearance (as we have before stated) of spots