o
set it down to disuse, yet we must on no account do so. The facts having
been stated, Mr. Darwin continues:--"These several considerations make
me believe that the wingless condition of so many Madeira beetles is
mainly due to the action of natural selection," and when we go on to the
words that immediately follow, "combined probably with disuse," we are
almost surprised at finding that disuse has had anything to do with the
matter. We feel a languid wish to know exactly how much and in what way
it has entered into the combination; but we find it difficult to think
the matter out, and are glad to take it for granted that the part played
by disuse must be so unimportant that we need not consider it. Mr.
Darwin continues:--

"For during many successive generations each individual beetle which
flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less
perfectly developed, or from indolent habit, will have had the best
chance of surviving from not having been blown out to sea; and on the
other hand those beetles which most readily took to flight would
oftenest be blown out to sea and perish."[371]

So apt are we to believe what we are told, when it is told us gravely
and with authority, and when there is no statement at hand to contradict
it, that we fail to see that Mr. Darwin is all the time really
attributing the winglessness of the Madeira beetles either to the _qua_
him _unknown causes_ which have led to the "ever so little less perfect
development of wing" on the part of the beetles that leave
offspring--that is to say, is admitting that he can give no account of
the matter--or else to the "indolent habit" of the parent beetles which
has led them to disuse their wings, and hence gradually to lose
them--which is neither more nor less than the "erroneous grounds of
opinion," and "well-known doctrine" of Lamarck.

For Mr. Darwin cannot mean that the fact of some beetles being blown out
to sea is the most important means whereby certain other beetles come to
have smaller wings--that the Madeira beetles in fact come to have
smaller wings mainly because their large winged uncles and aunts--go
away.

But if he does not mean this, what becomes of natural selection?

For in this case we are left exactly where Lamarck left us, and must
hold that such beetles as have smaller wings have them because the
conditions of life or "circumstances" in which their parents were
placed, rendered it inconvenient to them to fly