APPENDIX. 8l 



made to this and to similar objections, and Darwin 

 himself has referred to the fact that even the smallest 

 variations may have selective value; Dohrn, too, has 

 urged his principle of change of functions, which with 

 regard to this question of the utility of initial stages 

 has certainly a wide significance. Still, every trans- 

 formation and new structure in the narrow sense of 

 the word does not rest on change of function, and 

 neither Darwin nor Wallace, nor any other more re- 

 cent champion of the principle of selection, can ever 

 succeed in demonstrating in every case the selective 

 value of an initial stage. One reason why this cannot 

 be done is because in no case of morphological varia- 

 tion do we really know what these initial stages are. 

 To say that "new organs were at first necessarily im- 

 perfect" appears obvious enough, but it is at bottom a 

 meaningless assertion, for it is not only possible but 

 certain, that "imperfect" organs may still have selec- 

 tive value, and in by far the most cases have had se- 

 lective value. The fact that we see to-day a long grad- 

 uated line of forest-butterflies which possess resem- 

 blance to leaves and by this means are able in a meas- 

 ure to conceal themselves from prying eyes, yet that 

 this resemblance in many species is very imperfect, in 

 others more perfect, and in a very small number very 

 perfect, simply proves that even "imperfect" forma- 

 tions may be of utility. The word "imperfect" in this 

 connexion is itself very imperfect, for it is utterly an- 

 thropomorphic and estimates the biological value of a 

 structure by our own peculiar artistic notions of its 

 faithfulness to a leaf-copy, whilst we are really con- 

 cerned here only with its protective value for the 

 species in question, which is by no means dependent 

 merely on the faithfulness of the copying, on the faith- 



