I have taken the two Lamarckian factors together, and showed that they preceded the Darwinian. But even in the two Lamarckian factors there is a difference in grade. Undoubtedly the lowest, the most fundamental, and therefore the first introduced, was _pressure of the physical environment_. For use and disuse of organs implies some degree of volition and voluntary motion, and therefore already some advance in the scale of evolution. With the introduction of sex another entirely different and higher factor was introduced, viz., _natural selection_, or selection of the fittest individuals of a varying progeny. We have already seen how sexual generation produces variation of offspring, and how this furnishes materials for natural selection. As soon, therefore, as this form of generation was evolved, this higher factor came into operation and immediately assumed control; while the previous factors became subordinate, though still underlying, conditioning, and modifying the activity of the higher. The result was an immediate increase in the rate of evolution. It is very worthy of note that it is in the higher animals, such as birds and mammals, in which we have only the highest forms of sexual reproduction, where the diversity of characters of the two sexes funded in the offspring is the greatest, and where, therefore, the variation in offspring is also greatest and natural selection most active; it is precisely among these that the Lamarckian factors are most feeble, because, during the most plastic period of life, the offspring is removed from the influence of the physical environment, and from use and disuse by its inclosure within the womb, or within a large egg surrounded with abundant nutriment. Development is already well advanced before Lamarckian factors can operate at all.