Abstract
MR. HOWORTH sneers at “Survival of the Fittest” as an “identical expression” which “might have suggested itself even to a child,” an axiom, in short, of which the truth cannot be disputed. This is satisfactory; but it is strange that he did not apply this axiom to his own theory, and see how they agreed together. He would probably admit, as another discovery “that might have suggested itself to a child,” that as a rule the entire offspring of each animal or plant, except the one or two necessary to replace the parents, die before they produce offspring (this has never been denied since I put it prominently forward thirteen years ago). He would further admit, I have little doubt, that a great majority of animals and plants produce during their lifetime from ten to a thousand offspring, so that fifty will be a low average, but the exact number is of no importance. Forty-nine, therefore, of every fifty individuals born, die before reaching maturity; the fiftieth survives because it is “best fitted to survive,” because it has conquered in the struggle for existence. Will Mr. Howorth also admit as self-evident, that this one survivor in fifty is healthy, vigorous, and well nourished, not sickly, weak, or half-starved? If he maintains that it is the latter, I shall ask him to prove it; if the former, then what becomes of his theory as an argument against Natural Selection? For, admitting as a possibility that his theory of the greater fecundity of the weak, &c., is true, how are these weak or sickly parents to provide for and bring up to maturity their offspring, and how are the offspring themselves (undoubtedly less vigorous than the offspring of strong and healthy parents) to maintain themselves? The one in fifty who survives to leave descendants will inevitably be the strong and healthy offspring of strong and healthy parents; the forty-nine who die will comprise the weaker and less healthy offspring of weak and sickly parents; so that, as Mr. Darwin and myself have long ago shown, the number of offspring produced is, in most cases, the least important of the factors in determining the continuance of a species.
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WALLACE, A. Mr. Howorth on Darwinism. Nature 4, 221 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004221a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004221a0
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