I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.(Letter to A. R. Wallace July 1866)

~ Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin Agree Alfred Russel Wallace Biology Evolution Herbert Spencer Letter Natural Selection Science Spencer Survival Of The Fittest Wallace

Much of the geographical work of the past hundred years... has either explicitly or implicitly taken its inspiration from biology, and in particular Darwin. Many of the original Darwinians, such as Hooker, Wallace, Huxley, Bates, and Darwin himself, were actively concerned with geographical exploration, and it was largely facts of geographical distribution in a spatial setting which provided Darwin with the germ of his theory.

~ David R. Stoddart

David R. Stoddart Alfred Russel Wallace Bates Biology Charles Darwin Darwin Geography H W Bates Henry Bates Henry Walter Bates Hooker Huxley Impact Influence Joseph Dalton Hooker Joseph Hooker Russel Wallace Science T H Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Huxley Wallace