Diverse Strains in Higher Organisms 59 



recent years it has been rediscovered, and some believe that 

 it is almost worthy to rank with the great work of Mendel, 

 whose obscure fate it long shared. The discoverer, Alexis 

 Jordan, was, like Mendel, a devout Catholic ; and was guided 

 in his experimentation (unlike Mendel, apparently) by his 

 theological beliefs. He did not believe in the variability of 

 organisms, as taught by many prevailing doctrines, but 

 maintained that the differences within a species that were 

 commonly cited as variations were in reality permanent dif- 

 ferences between races. So as early as 1854* he undertook 

 the culture in his garden of certain common plants, notably 

 Draba verna, the common little weed called whitlow grass. 

 In ten years he was able to show that this contained ten 

 diverse races ; after twenty years' culture he announced that 

 he had now found 53 races ; and after culture for thirty 

 years he could show that there were 200 permanently diverse 

 stocks of Draba verna. He discovered the same thing to 

 be true for a number of other plants, and maintained there- 

 fore that his faith had been verified; the differences found 

 within a species were not variations in the sense of actual 

 changes which occurred, but merely permanent diversities, 

 which Jordan believed had existed ever since the organisms 

 were created ; instead of variations that occurred, there was 

 multiplicity that existed. 1 



Now whatever we may think of Jordan's line of argument, 

 the facts which he set forth have been confirmed in recent 

 years for a great number of organisms. And his direct 

 conclusion from those facts likewise stands fast. The dif- 

 ferences that we observe among the members of a species are 

 in the overwhelming majority of cases not "variations" in 

 the sense of being due to recent actual changes in the hered- 



ir The facts as to the work of Jordan are taken mainly from Lotsy, 

 1916 and 1916 a. 



