Abstract
THE doctrine of the “survival of the fittest” must be strangely understood in some quarters. The American papers report Prof. Agassiz as having expressed himself in this wise at a recent meeting of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, of which he is a member:—“I do not know how animals originated; a brilliant imagination that of Darwin; a very necessary faculty in the scientist. The sense I know too well to misquote him. Hasty generalising of observation is Darwin all over. Natural selection is out of generation. Natural necessity, what is it? Do we find that only the strong beget families? Observe plants at the foot of the White mountains, where are large trees, and so up to the summit, where they are mere shrubs. The weak may and do survive as well as the strong. Ignorance lies at the base of the discussion.”
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Survival of the Fittest . Nature 7, 404 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/007404c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/007404c0