Abstract
In 1844 Samuel Morse sent the world's first telegram; James Polk defeated Henry Clay in the U.S. presidential election; and in a tiny town in England, 35-year-old Charles Darwin put the finishing touches on the first full presentation of his "species theory."1 A central pillar of Darwin's theory was the idea of a "natural process of selection," which he described with these words: Yearly more are bred than can survive; the smallest grain in the balance, in the long run, must tell on which death shall fall, and which shall survive. Let this work of selection, on the one hand, and death on the other, go on for a thousand generations; who would pretend to affirm that it would produce no effect.