OTHER THEORIES OF SPECIES-FORMING. 325 



difficult to arrange them all in order and to distinguish clearly 

 those members which belong in the main line of descent, and those 

 which represent incipient branches. Some phylogenies actually 

 suffer from an embarrassment of riches." 



22 Whitman, C. O., "The Problem of the Origin of Species," Pro- 

 ceedings of Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, St. 



Whitman's Louis, Vol. V, pp. 41-58, 1906. In this paper Whit- 

 belief in deter- man takes strong ground for orthogenesis and recites 

 minate variation. j n detail a number of interesting facts touching the 

 evolution of pattern in pigeons to illustrate his belief. Touching 

 the criticism of orthogenesis, that it involves a teleologic element 

 in its make-up. Whitman says (p. 5) : "I take exception here only 

 to the implication that a definite variation-tendency must be con- 

 sidered to be teleologic because it is not 'orderless.' I venture to 

 assert that variation is sometimes orderly, and at other times rather 

 disorderly, and that the one is just as free from teleology as the 

 other. In our aversion to the old teleology so effectually banished 

 from science by Darwin we should not forget that the world is 

 full of order, the inorganic no less than the organic. Indeed, what 

 is the whole development of an organism if not strictly and marvel- 

 lously orderly? Is not every stage, from the primordial germ on- 

 ward, and the whole sequence of stages, rigidly orthogenetic? If 

 variations are deviations in the directions of the developmental 

 processes, what wonder is there if in some directions there is less 

 resistance to variation than in others? What wonder if the organ- 

 ism is so balanced as to permit of both unifarious and multifarious 

 variations? If a developmental process may run on throughout 

 life (e. g., the life-long multiplication of the surface-pores of the 

 lateral-line system in Amia), what wonder if we find the whole 

 species gravitating slowly in one or a few directions? And if 

 we find large groups of species, all affected by a light variation, 

 moving in the same general direction, are we compelled to regard 

 such 'a definite variation-tendency' as teleological, and hence out 

 of the pale of science? If a designer sets limits to variation in 

 order to reach a definite end, the direction of events is teleological ; 

 but if organisation and the laws of development exclude some 

 lines of variation and favour others, there is certainly nothing super- 

 natural in this, and nothing which is incompatible with natural 

 selection. Natural selection may enter at any stage of ortho- 

 genetic variation, preserve and modify in various directions the 

 results over which it may have had no previous control." 



23 Cunningham, an English neo-Lamarckian, expresses ("Origin 

 of Species Among Flatfishes." Natural Science, Vol. VI, p. 239, 

 1895) his belief in orthogenesis as follows: 



