re to remark that with all beings there must be much
fortuitous destruction, which can have little or no influence on the
course of Natural Selection. For instance, a vast number of eggs or
seeds are annually devoured, and these could be modified through Natural
Selection only if they varied in some manner which protected them from
their enemies. 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 which happened to survive. So again 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. But let the destruction of the adults be ever
so heavy, if the number which can exist in any district be not wholly
kept down by such causes,--or gain, let the destruction of eggs or seeds
be so great that only a hundredth or a thousandth part are
developed,--yet of those which do survive, the best adapted individuals,
supposing that there is any variability in a favorable direction, will
tend to propagate their kind in larger numbers than the less well
adapted. If the numbers be wholly kept down by the causes just
indicated, as will often have been the case, Natural Selection will be
powerless in certain beneficial directions; but this is no valid
objection to its efficiency at other times and in other ways; for we are
far from having any reason to suppose that many species ever undergo
modification and improvement at the same time in the same area.

PROGRESSIVE CHANGE COMPARED WITH INDEPENDENT CREATION

From the 'Origin of Species'

Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view
that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords
better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator,
that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants
of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those
determining the birth and death of an individual. When I view all beings
not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few
beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was
deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we
may safely infer tha