"of greater importance, for
the time being, than most of the other attributes"; and that natural
selection cannot develop any one superiority when animals are equally
preserved by "other superiorities." But as natural selection will
simultaneously eliminate tendencies to slowness, blindness, deafness,
stupidity, &c., it _must_ favour and improve many points simultaneously,
although no one of them may be of greater importance than the rest. Of
course the more complicated the evolution the slower it will be; but
time is plentiful, and the amount of elimination is correspondingly
vast.

[10] I venture to coin this concise term to signify _the direct
inheritance of the effects of use and disuse in kind_. Having a name for
a thing is highly convenient; it facilitates clearness and accuracy in
reasoning, and in this particular inquiry it may save some confusion of
thought from double or incomplete meanings in the shortened phrases
which would otherwise have to be employed to indicate this great but
nameless factor of evolution.

[11] _Origin of Species_, pp. 230-232; Bates's _Naturalist on the
Amazons_. Darwin is "surprised that no one has hitherto advanced the
demonstrative case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of
inherited habit, as advanced by Lamarck." As he justly observes, "it
proves that with animals, as with plants, any amount of modification may
be effected by the accumulation of numerous, slight, spontaneous
variations, which are in any way profitable, without exercise or habit
having been brought into play. For peculiar habits confined to the
workers or sterile females, however long they might be followed, could
not possibly affect the males and fertile females, which alone leave any
descendants." Some slight modification of these remarks, however, may
possibly be needed to meet the case of "factitious queens," who
(probably through eating particles of the royal food) become capable of
producing a few male eggs.

[12] _Descent of Man_, pp. 573, 572, and footnote.

[13] _Contemporary Review_, December, 1875, p. 92.

[14] See _Origin of Species_, pp. 5-8. "Changed conditions induce an
almost indefinite amount of fluctuating variability, by which the whole
organization is rendered in some degree plastic" (_Descent of Man_, p.
30). It also appears that "the nature of the conditions is of
subordinate importance in comparison with the nature of the organism in
determining each particular form of v