have the
fact of variety offering itself to nature, as in the former instance
it offered itself to man; and those varieties which are least
competent to cope with surrounding conditions will infallibly give way
to those that are most competent. To use a familiar proverb, the
weakest goes to the wall. But the triumphant fraction again breeds to
over-production, transmitting the qualities which secured its
maintenance, but transmitting them in different degrees. The struggle
for food again supervenes, and those to whom the favourable quality
has been transmitted in excess, will triumph as before.

It is easy to see that we have here the addition of increments
favourable to the individual, still more rigorously carried out than
in the case of domestication; for not only are unfavourable specimens
not selected by nature, but they are destroyed. This is what Mr.
Darwin calls 'Natural Selection,' which acts by the preservation and
accumulation of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the
preserved being. With this idea he interpenetrates and leavens the
vast store of facts that he and others have collected. We cannot,
without shutting our eyes through fear or prejudice, fail to see that
Darwin is here dealing, not with imaginary, but with true causes; nor
can we fail to discern what vast modifications may be produced by
natural selection in periods sufficiently long. Each individual
increment may resemble what mathematicians call a 'differential' (a
quantity indefinitely small); but definite and great changes may
obviously be produced by the integration of these infinitesimal
quantities, through practically infinite time.

If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the notion of creative power, acting
after human fashion, it certainly is not because he is unacquainted
with the numberless exquisite adaptations, on which this notion of a
supernatural Artificer has been founded. His book is a repository of
the most startling facts of this description. Take the marvellous
observation which he cites from Dr. Krueger, where a bucket, with an
aperture serving as a spout, is formed in an orchid. Bees visit the
flower: in eager search of material for their combs, they push each
other into the bucket, the drenched ones escaping from their
involuntary bath by the spout. Here they rub their backs against the
viscid stigma of the flower and obtain glue; then against the pollen
masses, which are thus stuck to the back of the