xi, c. 4 Copeland: Natural Selection 155 



"Species do not, so far as we can tell, appear in any sort of advantageous 

 response to local conditions, which are the only conditions that matter when 

 they first appear. Having appeared, a species will, or will not, spread, 

 according to its suitability to local conditions. In each locality the ultimate 

 commonness of a species will depend upon its degree of adaptation to the 

 local conditions, and to a large extent, on chance." And from the paper 

 on the Dilleniaceae, "Dillenia ovata was perhaps the first, or the best 

 adapted, for it has spread comparatively widely." 



Regarding myself as a confirmed adherent of the doctrine of 

 natural selection, I do not hold it in the slightest measure directly 

 responsable for the origin of any species. Species originate by 

 variation. There is not the slightest doubt that in very nearly 

 all cases — if not in quite all cases, the exceptions have never 

 been well demostrated — variation is indiscriminate in direction. 

 Now, if any man chooses to define a mutation as a variation 

 that gives rise to a new specific character, then, certainly, species 

 originate by mutation exclusively. My own objection to this use 

 of words is that they are newer than the ideas they would express, 

 are therefore superfluous, and consequently are a nuisance. 

 There is nothing new in holding that the mutations are in- 

 dependent of natural selection, since the variations have always 

 been held to be so. Doctor Willis maintains that the species 

 originate by mutations which occur independently of fitness. 

 The older idea is that the species, or characteristics, originate 

 by variation, independently of natural selection. Neither the 

 validity nor the scope of the doctrine of natural selection seems 

 to be seriously impaired by the substitution of the novel word. 

 When any man distinguishes a mutation from a variation by a 

 usable definition, it will become possible to see whether the change 

 of words is justified and to test its effects. The author of muta- 

 tions (de Vries) presented no such definition, unless it be the one 

 already suggested, that a mutation is a variation which produces 

 a specific character; as to the latter, de Vries took us back to 

 the starting point, from which we might wander around the 

 circle ad libitum, by identifying specific characters by their origin 

 through mutation. If any subsequent writer has identified muta- 

 tions more intelligibly, it has escaped me ; Doctor Willis, at least, 

 will hardly attempt this, in view of his clear recognition of 

 the inherent hopelessness of attempting to draw any line between 

 small differences and bigger ones, between the measure of inci- 

 sion of a leaf-margin and the characters that are used to dis- 

 tinguish species, genera, and even families. 



While the choice of diction as between mutation and variation 

 has properly nothing to do with the recognition of natural selec- 



