APPENDIX. 75 



is, the actual resultant phyletic modification, permits 

 their being known as phyletic or as vacillating varia- 

 tions. Uncertain fluctuations along the path of evo- 

 lution are what the geologists would be naturally led 

 to expect from the theory of selection, but which they 

 were unable to discover in the facts ; it is evident, how- 

 ever, that these fluctuations are not a logical conse- 

 quence of the theory of selection as that is perfected 

 by germinal selection, and there seems to me to be no 

 reason now for attributing "variations" to the union 

 of changing hereditary tendencies, while "mutations" 

 are ascribed to the effect "of dynamical agencies act- 

 ing long in a uniform way, and the results controlled 

 by natural selection." 



The idea which the Grecian philosophers evolved of 

 the thousands of non-adaptive formations that nature 

 brings forth by the side of adaptive ones, and which 

 must subsequently all perish as being unfit to live, is 

 certainly correct in its ultimate foundations. But it is 

 in need of far more radical refinement than it under- 

 went in the hands of Empedocles, or than it seems 

 likely to undergo at the hands of many contemporary 

 inquirers. We know now that nature did not produce 

 isolated eyes, ears, arms, legs, and trunks, and after- 

 wards permit them to be joined together just as the 

 play of the fundamental forces of love and hatred 

 directed, leaving the monsters to perish and granting 

 permanent existence only to harmonious products. Yet 

 there is a weak echo of this conception, although in- 

 finitely far removed from its prototype, in the ques- 

 tion as to where all the non-adaptive individuals are 

 preserved that have perished in the struggle for exis- 

 tence and been eliminated from development by 

 selection ? Where, for example, are the fossil remains 



