a geometrical ratio is sometimes realised under very favourable circumstances, it is a baseless assumption to suppose that it will be often realised; and that while a great output of life often occurs, it is a baseless assumption to assert that it must be followed by a discriminative destruction?

(b) BLINDFOLD DEATH.

"Gaunt: I thank my liege, that, in regard of me, He shortens four years of my son's exile:

But little vantage shall I reap thereby ;

For, ere the six years, that he hath to spend,

Can change their moons, and bring their times about,
My oil-dried lamp, and time-bewasted light,
Shall be extinct with age, and endless night;
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
And blindfold death not let me see my son."

-(Richard II. Act i., sc. 3.)

After what has been said in the preceding section, we shall be justified in asserting that the enormous output of life which sometimes occurs in nature is not followed by that discriminative destruction which the theory of Natural Selection requires. Putting on one side the fact of the enormous fertility of organic life, we have now to consider how far the death which takes place in nature is discriminative: how far it is accidental, which in this connection means non-discriminative. Now, it is an axiom of the advocate of Natural Selection that there is and can be no such thing as accidental death. The logic of the theory demands for the animal world an

existence unexposed

To the blind walk of mortal accident."

-(Wordsworth.

The Excursion.

Mr. Wallace says:-"We must get rid of the idea that chance determines which shall live and which die."* This requirement is certainly not met by the actual phenomenon of destruction as it occurs in nature. There we

find a large amount of accidental death in the sense of indiscriminative, non-selective death. This Mr. Darwin admits. "With all beings there is much fortuitous destruction which can have little or no influence on the course of Natural Selection."†

When John of Gaunt thanks the King because his son's exile has been shortened by four years, he foresees that he will not be the gainer thereby, because before the remaining six years can have run their course he will be dead, and a blindfold death will not let him see his son ; which means, in plain English, that death will not act in accordance with his wishes, and save his life in order that he may see his son once more. In this sense, the death which takes place in nature is sometimes blindfold : it does not act in accordance with the principles of Natural Selection. There is a great deal of death which takes place quite irrespective of the question as to which is best or worst-the best fitted or the least fitted to live.

We find illustrations of the action of an indiscriminative death in the case of the young, the immature and the mature. With respect to the young especially does this remark apply. The issue of their struggle for life might be expressed in the language of Leontes concerning the infant found on the sea-shore:

commend it strangely to some place,

Where chance may nurse or end it."

Dr. Weismann testifies to the enormous amount of destruction which takes place among the young :

"The young of birds are greatly exposed to destructive agencies. In the majority of birds, the egg, as soon as it is laid, becomes exposed to the attacks of enemies; martins and weasels, cats and owls, buzzards and crows are all on the look out for it. At a later period the same enemies destroy numbers of the helpless young, and in winter many succumb in the struggle against cold and hunger, or to the numerous dangers which attend migration over land and sea, dangers which decimate the young birds."(Weismann. Essays upon Heredity. p. 12.)

"Even the eggs of our most powerful native bird of prey, the golden eagle, which all animals fear, and of which the eyrie, perched on a rocky height, is beyond the reach of any enemies, are frequently destroyed by late frosts or snow in spring, and at the end of the year in winter the young birds encounter the fiercest of foes, viz., hunger." (Weismann. Essays. p. 12.)

We have the authority of Mr. Darwin for asserting that a great deal of this destruction is non-selective.

"A vast number of eggs or seeds are annually devoured. Yet many of these eggs or seeds would perhaps, if not destroyed, have yielded individuals better adapted to their conditions of life than any of those who happened to survive.”—(Darwin. Origin of Species. p. 68.)

Mr. Henslow speaks to the same effect in his Floral Structures.

"The greatest difficulty I have always felt in the idea that a plant was selected because it had some floral structures more appropriate than others, lay first in the fact that the principal period of the struggle for life takes place in the seedling stage, before any varietal and specific characters have appeared; and unless there were a large number of the seedlings which would ultimately bear the improved flower, or else a superior constitutional vigour be guaranteed to be correlated with the particular varietal characters to be preserved, these alone could have nothing to do with the survival of the fittest." (The Origin of Floral Structures through Insect and other Agencies. p. 333.)

Death often takes place among the individuals not yet mature, under conditions in which it cannot produce the result anticipated by the theory of Natural Selection.

"When the mango fruit is swelling in late April, but still unripe, it is dreadful to see the utter destruction entailed by a large troop of monkeys. It is not what they actually consume, but the immense quantity which they spoil by recklessly biting hundreds and thousands of unripe fruit and throwing them discarded upon the ground." -(Baker. Wild Beasts and their Ways. vol. ii., p. 359.)

The same fate of indiscriminative death also takes place in connection with the mature.

"A vast number of mature animals and plants, whether or not they be the best adapted to their conditions, must be annually destroyed by accidental causes, which would not be in the least degree mitigated by certain changes of structure or constitution, which would in other ways be beneficial to the species.”—(Origin of Species. p. 68.)

The element of accident must enter largely into the struggle between animals of prey and their victims.

"The excessive voracity of the pike has long been proverbial. No animal substance which it can swallow, and which is capable of being digested, seems to be unpalatable to it. A large pike often takes possession of a particular hole in the bank of a river, from which it issues to seize any creature that may pass."— (Chambers Encyclopædia. 1st ed.)

Speaking of the Wari, or wild pigs (Dicoteles tajaçu), found in Nicaragua, Mr. Belt says:

"These Wari go in herds of from fifty to one hundred. They are said to assist each other against the attacks of the jaguar, but that wary animal is too intelligent for them. He sits quietly upon a branch of a tree until the Wari come underneath; then jumping down, kills one by breaking its neck; leaps up into the tree again, and waits there until the herd depart, when he comes down and feeds on the slaughtered Wari in quietness.”—(The Naturalist in Nicaragua. p. 30.)

It cannot be that in such circumstances the jaguar picks out the worst, or probably has any reason for selecting one more than another.

"It is clear that in such animals as insects, we can only speak figuratively of normal death, if we mean by this an end which is not due to accident. In these animals an accidental end is the rule, and is therefore, strictly speaking, normal.”—(Weismann. Essays. p. 22.)

In these cases we have no right to assume that death has produced results equivalent to those of a discriminating choice. The theory requires that there should be strict competition between all the members of a species; but in order that this strict competition should take place it is necessary that the trial should be made under exactly the same conditions. This point is brought out very distinctly by Mr. Fiske in the following passage:

"Who can doubt that antelopes are so fleet, only because all but the fleetest individuals are sure to be overtaken and eaten by lions? Protected from the lions, a thousand generations might well make them as lazy and clumsy as sheep.”—(Darwinism and other Essays. p. 15.)

But what are the facts of the case?

"The lion often springs upon his prey by a sudden bound, accompanied with a roar; and it is said if he fails in seizing it, he does not usually pursue, but retires as if ashamed. It is certain, however, that the lion also often takes his prey by pursuing it, and with great perseverance. The animal singled out for pursuit may be swifter of foot than the lion, but great power of endurance enables the lion to make it his victim.”—(Chambers Ency.)

Here the lion does not catch the hindmost of a herd that is the slowest, but it singles out one individual and follows it so persistently that the victim is caught in spite of its speed.

Sometimes, the bird or beast of prey is so much swifter than its victim that it is sure to capture the animal which it selects for pursuit.

"In his work on Game Preservers and Bird Preservers, Mr. Morant tells us that the celerity of the falcon is so tremendously in excess of that of the fleetest grouse that all differences in speed among the