178 NATURAL SCIENCE [September 



" It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily 

 and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest varia- 

 tions ; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all 

 that are good." l This, as far as the origin of species is concerned, 

 is a pure assumption ; and what I contend for is, that since observa- 

 tion and experiment show conclusively that variations can arise 

 rapidly under one's very eyes, there is no need to assume any other 

 process whatever than the protoplasmic response to environ- 

 ments. Thus, rhizomes are often recognised as being of specific or 

 other diagnostic value, but when an aerial stem is made to grow 

 underground, its new growth at once begins to assume the charac- 

 ters of an ordinary rhizome. Eoots, stems and leaves normally 

 living submerged have characters which are at once more or less 

 assumed by a terrestrial plant if it be made to grow in water, and 

 vice versd ; or if a water plant send a shoot into the air the change 

 is abrupt at the level of the water. Plants in damp places are often 

 very different as a whole from those in excessively dry situations. 

 Ee verse their positions and each at once begins to assume the 

 characters of the other as soon as they grow in response to their 

 surroundings. If lowland plants or their seeds be grown in 

 high alpine regions they at once assume the facies of normal 

 alpine plants. The markedly peculiar features of desert plants at 

 once begin to break clown, when a normally desert plant is grown 

 in ordinary soil, just as the wild carrot or parsnip may quickly 

 acquire the characteristic features of the cultivated form. 



If Darwin had fully realised the significance of these and such 

 like facts, he could hardly have continued the above passage with 

 the following words : — " We see nothing of these slow changes in 

 progress, until the hand of time has marked the lapse of ages ; and 

 then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we 

 see only that the forms of life are now different from what they 

 formerly were." 2 That all this is due to natural selection is 

 simply an unverified deduction. 



Self-adaptation, by Response to the Definite Action of 

 Changed Conditions of Life, the True Origin of Species. — 

 That plants vary by self-adaptation to a new environment is proved 

 by inductive evidence and amply verified by experiment. 



Let me repeat. — The struggle for life is incessant. Apart from 

 ill-luck, which applies to all alike, the weaker in constitution are 

 often expunged, while the stronger survive and the general dis- 

 tribution of plants in time and space is the result. This however, 

 as Darwin insisted, is a quite different thing from the origin of 

 species. 



The origin of species is due, for the most part, or as a broad 



1 " Origin, otc A " p. 05. 2 " Origin, etc.," p. 66. 



