DARWINISM AN EXPOSITION OF THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION WITH SOME OF ITS APPLICATIONS BY ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE LL.D., F.L.S., ETC. WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR, MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS MACMILLAN AND CO. LONDON AND NEW YORK [Second Edition] 1889 * * * * * [Illustration: Alfred R. Wallace] * * * * * PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION The present edition is a reprint of the first, with a few verbal corrections and the alteration of some erroneous or doubtful statements. Of these latter the following are the most important:-- _P._ 30. The statement as to the fulmar petrel, which Professor A. Newton assures me is erroneous, has been modified. _P._ 34. A note is added as to Darwin's statement about the missel and song-thrushes in Scotland. _P._ 172. An error as to the differently-coloured herds of cattle in the Falkland Islands, is corrected. PARKSTONE, DORSET _August, 1889_. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION The present work treats the problem of the Origin of Species on the same general lines as were adopted by Darwin; but from the standpoint reached after nearly thirty years of discussion, with an abundance of new facts and the advocacy of many new or old theories. While not attempting to deal, even in outline, with the vast subject of evolution in general, an endeavour has been made to give such an account of the theory of Natural Selection as may enable any intelligent reader to obtain a clear conception of Darwin's work, and to understand something of the power and range of his great principle. Darwin wrote for a generation which had not accepted evolution, and which poured contempt on those who upheld the derivation of species from species by any natural law of descent. He did his work so well that "descent with modification" is now universally accepted as the order of nature in the organic world; and the rising generation of naturalists can hardly realise the novelty of this idea, or that their fathers considered it a scientific heresy to be condemned rather than seriously discussed.