What we need are not prohibitory marriage laws, but a reformed society, an educated public opinion which will teach individual duty in these matters

What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?

But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.

Why do some die and some live? The answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live. From the effects of disease the most healthy escaped; from enemies, the strongest, swiftest, or the most cunning; from famine, the best hunters or those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain-that is, the fittest would survive.

As well might it be said that, because we are ignorant of the laws by which metals are produced and trees developed, we cannot know anything of the origin of steamships and railways

There is a tendency in nature to the continued progression of certain classes of varieties further and further from the original type.

Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.