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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: varieties of the same species, the struggle will generally be almost
equally severe, and we sometimes see the contest soon decided: for
instance, if several varieties of wheat be sown together, and the mixed
seed be resown, some of the varieties which best suit the soil or climate,
or are naturally the most fertile, will beat the others and so yield more
seed, and will consequently in a few years quite supplant the other
varieties. To keep up a mixed stock of even such extremely close varieties
as the variously coloured sweet-peas, they must be each year harvested
separately, and the seed then mixed in due proportion, otherwise the weaker
kinds will steadily decrease in numbers and disappear. So again with the
varieties of sheep: it has been asserted that certain mountain-varieties
On the Origin of Species |
