amarck includes as a matter of course the fact that
the "stronger and better armed should eat the weaker," and thus survive
and bear offspring which would inherit the strength and better armour of
its parents. Nothing therefore can be more at variance with the truth
than to represent Lamarck and the other early evolutionists as ignoring
the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest; these are
inevitably implied whenever they use the word "_circonstances_" or
environment, as I will more fully show later on, and are also expressly
called attention to by the greater number of them.[250]

"Animals, except those which are herbivorous, prey upon one another; and
the herbivorous are exposed to the attacks of the flesh-eating races.

"_The strongest and best armed for attack eat the weaker_, and the
greater kinds eat the smaller. Individuals of the same race rarely eat
one another; they war only with other races than their own."[251]

Dr. Darwin here again has the advantage over Lamarck; for he has pointed
out how the males contend with one another for the possession of the
females, which I do not find Lamarck to have done, though he would at
once have admitted the fact. Lamarck continues:--

"The smaller kinds of animals breed so numerously and so rapidly that
they would people the globe to the exclusion of other forms of life, if
nature had not limited their inconceivable multitude. As, however, they
are the prey of a number of other creatures, live but a short time, and
perish easily with cold, they are kept always within the proportions
necessary for the maintenance both of their own and of other races.[252]

"As regards the larger and stronger animals, they would become dominant,
and be injurious to the conservation of many other races, if they could
multiply in too great numbers. But as it is, they devour one another,
and breed but slowly, and few at a birth, so that equilibrium is duly
preserved among them. Man alone is the unquestionably dominant animal,
but men war among themselves, so that it may be safely said the world
will never be peopled to its utmost capacity."[253]

In his fifth chapter Lamarck returns to the then existing arrangement
and classification of animals.

"Naturalists having remarked that many species, and some genera and even
families present characters which as it were isolate them, it has been
imagined that these approached or drew further from each other according
as their poin