406 PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION. CHAP. XX. pearing as an integral part of the same continuous series of acts of development, one link in the same chain, the crowning operation as it were of one and the same series of manifestations of creative power. If the dangers apprehended from transmutation arise from the too intimate connection which it tends to establish between the human and merely animal natures, it might have been expected that the progressive development of organisation, instinct, and intelligence might have been unpopular, as likely to pioneer the way for the reception of the less favoured doctrine. But the true explanation of the seeming anomaly is this, that no one can believe in transmutation who is not profoundly convinced that all we know in paleontology is as nothing compared with what we have yet to learn, and they who regard the record as so fragmentary, and our acquaintance with the fragments which are extant as so rudimentary, are apt to be astounded at the confidence placed by the progressionists in data which must be defective in the extreme. But exactly in proportion as the completeness of the record and our knowledge of it are overrated, in that same degree are many progressionists unconscious of the goal towards which they are drifting. Their faith in the fullness of the annals leads them to regard all breaks in the series of organic existence, or in the sequence of the fossiliferous rocks, as proofs of original chasms and leaps in the course of nature,-signs of the intermittent action of the creational force, or of catastrophes which devastated the habitable surface. They do not doubt that there is a continuity of plan, but they believe that it exists in the Divine mind alone, and they are therefore without apprehension that any facts will be discovered which would imply a material connection between the outgoing organisms and the incoming ones. MR. DARWIN'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL NOT A NECESSARY ACCOMPANIMENT OF OR many years after the promulgation of Lamarck's doc trine of progressive development, geologists were much occupied with the question whether the past changes in the animate and inanimate world were brought about by sudden and paroxysmal action, or gradually and continuously, by causes differing neither in kind nor degree from those now in operation. The anonymous author of The Vestiges of Creation' published in 1844 a treatise, written in a clear and attractive style, which made the English public familiar with the leading views of Lamarck on transmutation and progression, but brought no new facts or original line of argument to sup 408 MR. DARWIN'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN CHAP. XXI. port those views, or to combat the principal objections which the scientific world entertained against them. 6 No decided step in this direction was made until the publication in 1858 of two papers, one by Mr. Darwin and another by Mr. Wallace, followed in 1859 by Mr. Darwin's celebrated work on The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or, the Preservation of favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.' The author of this treatise had for twenty previous years strongly inclined to believe that variation and the ordinary laws of reproduction were among the secondary causes always employed by the Author of nature, in the introduction from time to time of new species into the world, and he had devoted himself patiently to the collecting of facts, and making of experiments in zoology and botany, with a view of testing the soundness of the theory of transmutation. Part of the MS. of his projected work was read to Dr. Hooker as early as 1844, and some of the principal results were communicated to me on several occasions. Dr. Hooker and I had repeatedly urged him to publish without delay, but in vain, as he was always unwilling to interrupt the course of his investigations; until at length Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, who had been engaged for years in collecting and studying the animals of the East Indian archipelago, thought out, independently for himself, one of the most novel and important of Mr. Darwin's theories. This he embodied in an essay On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the original Type.' It was written at Ternate, in February 1858, and sent to Mr. Darwin, with a request that it might be shown to me if thought sufficiently novel and interesting. Dr. Hooker and I were of opinion that it should be immediately printed, and we succeeded in persuading Mr. Darwin to allow one of the MS. chapters of his 'Origin of Species,' entitled 'On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties, and on the Perpetuation of Species and CHAP. XXI. OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 409 Varieties by natural Means of Selection,' to appear at the same time.* By reference to these memoirs it will be seen that both writers begin by applying to the animal and vegetable worlds the Malthusian doctrine of population, or its tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio, while food can only be made to augment even locally in an arithmetical one. There being, therefore, no room or means of subsistence for a large proportion of the plants and animals which are born into the world, a great number must annually perish. Hence there is a constant struggle for existence among the individuals which represent each species, and the vast majority can never reach the adult state, to say nothing of the multitudes of ova and seeds, which are never hatched or allowed to germinate. Of birds it is estimated that the number of those which die every year equals the aggregate number by which the species to which they respectively belong is on the average permanently represented. The trial of strength, which must decide what individuals are to survive and what to succumb, occurs in the season when the means of subsistence are fewest, or enemies most numerous, or when the individuals are enfeebled by climate or other causes; and it is then that those varieties which have any, even the slightest, advantage over others come off victorious. They may often owe their safety to what would seem to a casual observer a trifling difference, such as a darker or lighter shade of colour rendering them less visible to a species which preys upon them, or sometimes to attributes more obviously advantageous, such as greater cunning, or superior powers of flight or swiftness of foot. These peculiar qualities and faculties, bodily and instinctive, may enable them to outlive their less favoured rivals, and being transmitted *See Proceedings of Linnean Society, 1858. 410 FORMATION OF NEW RACES. CHAP. XXI. by the force of inheritance to their offspring, will constitute new races, or what Mr. Darwin calls incipient species.' If one variety, being in other respects just equal to its competitors, happens to be more prolific, some of its offspring will stand a greater chance of being among those which will escape destruction, and their descendants, being in like manner very fertile, will continue to multiply at the expense of all less prolific varieties. As breeders of domestic animals, when they choose certain varieties in preference to others to breed from, speak technically of their method as that of 'selecting,' Mr. Darwin calls the combination of natural causes, which may enable certain varieties of wild animals or plants to prevail over others of the same species, 'natural selection.' A breeder finds that a new race of cattle with short horns or without horns may be formed, in the course of several generations, by choosing varieties having the most stunted horns as his stock from which to breed; so nature, by altering, in the course of ages, the conditions of life, the geographical features of a country, its climate, the associated plants and animals, and, consequently, the food and enemies of a species and its mode of life, may be said, by this means, to select certain varieties best adapted for the new state of things. Such new races may often supplant the original type from which they have diverged, although that type may have been perpetuated without modification for countless anterior ages in the same region, so long as it was in harmony with the surrounding conditions then prevailing. Lamarck, when speculating on the origin of the long neck of the giraffe, imagined that quadruped to have stretched himself up in order to reach the boughs of lofty trees, until by continued efforts, and longing to reach higher, he obtained an elongated neck. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simply suppose that, in a season of scarcity, a longer-necked variety, |