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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 structure. As the numbers of the favoured 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; but there can hardly be a doubt, judging by what we see taking place under domestication, that this result would follow from the preservation during many generations of a large number of individuals with more or less curved beaks, and from the destruction of a still larger number with the straightest beaks.” This admission appears to the author to be of compromising significance.1

1 Mr. Darwin, in his recent work on Man, makes the further remarkable admission: "I now admit . . . that in the earlier editions of my 'Origin of Species' I probably attributed too much to the action of Natural Selection, or the survival of the fittest. I had not formerly sufficiently considered the existence of many structures which appear to be, as far as

These remarks have been quoted at length, because they so greatly intensify the difficulties brought forward in this chapter. If the most favourable 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 certain 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 variations 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 have 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"

we can judge, neither beneficial nor injurious."-See "Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 152.

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, together with certain other exceptional modes of development, have been brought forward. The appearance of colour 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 against the sole or predominant action of Natural Selection 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 amongst 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 of fungi, &c.-are alternatives of an improbability so extreme as to be practically equal to impossibility.

In spite of all the resources of a fertile imagination, the Darwinian, pure and simple, is reduced to the assertion of a paradox as great as any he opposes. In the place of a mere assertion of our ignorance as to the way these phenomena have been produced, he brings forward as their explanation a cause which, it is contended in this work, is demonstrably insufficient.

Of course here, as elsewhere throughout nature, we have to do with the operation of fixed and constant natural laws, and the knowledge of these may before long be obtained by human patience or human genius. There seems, however, already enough evidence to show that these as yet unknown natural laws will never be resolved into the action of "Natural Selection," but will constitute or exemplify a mode and condition of organic action of which the Darwinian theory takes no account whatsoever.

CHAPTER III.

THE CO-EXISTENCE OF CLOSELY SIMILAR STRUCTURES

OF DIVERSE ORIGIN.

Chances against concordant variations.-Examples of discordant ones.— Concordant variations not unlikely on a non-Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis. Placental and implacental mammals.—Birds and reptiles. - Independent origins of similar sense organs.—The ear.—The eye. — Other coincidences.-Causes besides "Natural Selection" produce concordant variations, in certain geographical regions.-Causes besides “Natural Selection" produce concordant variations, in certain zoological and botanical groups. There are homologous parts not genetically related. Harmony in respect of the organic and inorganic worlds.— Summary and conclusion.

THE theory of "Natural Selection" supposes that the varied \ forms and structure of animals and plants have been built up merely by indefinite, fortuitous,1 minute variations in every part and in all directions-those variations only being preserved which are directly or indirectly useful to the individual possessing them, or necessarily correlated with such useful variations.

On this theory the chances are almost infinitely great against the independent accidental occurrence and preservation of two similar series of minute variations resulting

1 By accidental variations Mr. Darwin does not, of course, mean to imply variations really due to "chance," but to utterly indeterminate antecedents.

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