Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/95

Rh the survival of the fittest, his less improved competitors, but as far as we know, no man or succession of men have ever observed the whole process in any single case, and certainly no man has ever recorded the observation. Variation by artificial selection of course we know very well; but the intervention of the cattle breeder and the pigeon fancier is the essence of artificial selection. It is effected by their own action in crossing, by their skill in bringing the right mates together, to produce the progeniture they want. But in Natural Selection who is to supply the breeder's place? Unless the crossing is properly arranged the new breed will never come into being. What is to secure that the two individuals of opposite sexes in the primeval forest, who have been both accidentally blessed with the same advantageous variation, shall meet and transmit by inheritance that variation to their successors? Unless this step is made good, the modification will never get a start; and yet there is nothing to insure that step except pure chance. The law of chances takes the place of the cattle breeder and the pigeon fancier. The biologists do well to ask for an immeasurable expanse of time, if the occasional meetings of advantageously varied couples from age to age are to provide the pedigree of modifications which unite us to our ancestor the jelly-fish. Of course the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest, would in the long run secure the predominance of the stronger breed over the weaker. But it would be of no use in setting the improved breed going. There would be no time. No possible variation which is known to our experience, in the short time that elapses in a single life between the moment of maturity and the age of reproduction, could enable the varied individual to clear the field of all competitors, either by slaughtering them or starving them out. But unless the struggle for existence took this summary and internecine character, there would be nothing but mere chance to secure that the advantageously varied bridegroom at one end of the wood should meet the bride who by a happy contingency had been advantageously varied in the same direction at the