nst 7000 B's at first,
and the chances are once more equal, while if there be 7002 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 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 {60}
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 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 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 pr