DEPARTMENT OF EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION * 



C. B. Davenport, Director. 



The President of the Institution has suggested that in estimating the work 

 of departments the unit should not be the year but the decade. It is now half 

 a decade since work at the Station for Experimental Evolution was started, 

 and this may be regarded as an opportune time for considering what this 

 Station has accomplished and what may fairly be expected by the end of the 

 first decade. 



At the outset the investigators at this Station had not had extensive expe- 

 rience in breeding-work. Little such work was then done in scientific labora- 

 tories or departments of universities. A year or two was required to gain 

 experience, but work rapidly increased to the maximum that each was able to 

 handle properly. The material under observation and experimentation has 

 included mammals (cats, sheep, goats), birds (poultry, canaries and other 

 finches), fishes (to a very limited extent, with the cooperation of the State 

 fish-hatchery), insects (including beetles, Lepidoptera, and flies), and flower- 

 ing plants in great number. An extensive body of technical experience in 

 the proper method of breeding these organisms has been acquired. 



The problem of the "origin of species" has taken on quite a new form in 

 the half-century since Darwin's epoch-making work appeared. Formerly 

 individuals weie thought of as a whole and the attempt was made to arrange 

 them in varieties, species, genera, and so on. The basis of classification was, 

 indeed, the possession of one or more common characteristics of form or 

 function, but the characteristic was thought of merely as a convenient incident, 

 of interest chiefly to the classifier. Today we clearly recognize that the whole 

 problem of evolution is the problem of origin, nature, and relations of char- 

 acteristics. The production of a new "species" is the production of a new 

 characteristic ; not necessarily new to nature, but in a new combination. He 

 who by hybridization makes a new combination of characteristics that breeds 

 true makes a new species, as truly as he who induces by physical or chemical 

 means a characteristic that is both new to the species and breeds true. The 

 difference in the two cases rests largely on the origin or source of the char- 

 acteristic in the two cases. 



Since characteristics are of primary importance in evolution, it is the busi- 

 ness of this Station to consider them from all aspects, attention at present 

 being directed principally to the following subjects: 



* Situated at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York. Grant No. 538. $29,000 

 for investigations and maintenance. (For previous reports see Year Books Nos. 3, 4, 

 5,6, and 7.) 



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