18 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



The factorial mutant answers neither the endurance test 

 nor the intersterility test of a genuine species. It would, doubt- 

 less, be going too far to regard all such mutant forms as ex- 

 amples of germinal degeneracy, but it cannot be denied that 

 all of them, when compared to the wild type, are in the direc- 

 tion of unfitness, none of them being viable and prosperous 

 under the severe conditions obtaining in the wild state. Bate- 

 son, who seems to regard all mutant characters as recessive 

 and due to germinal loss, declares: "Even in Drosophila, 

 where hundreds of genetically distinct factors have been iden- 

 tified, very few new dominants, that is to say positive addi- 

 tions, have been seen, and I am assured that none of them are 

 of a class which could be expected to be viable under natural 

 conditions. I understand even that none are certainly viable 

 in the homozygous state." (Toronto Address, Science, Jan. 20, 

 1922, p. 59.) "Garden or greenhouse products," says D. S. 

 Jordan, "are immensely interesting and instructive, but they 

 throw little light on the origin of species. To call them spe- 

 cies is like calling dress-parade cadets 'soldiers.' I have heard 

 this definition of a soldier, 'one that has stood.' It is easy to 

 trick out a group of boys to look like soldiers, but you can 

 not define them as such until they have 'stood.' " {Science, 

 Oct. 20, 1922.) In a word, factorial mutants, owing, as they 

 do, their survival exclusively to the protection of artificial 

 conditions, could never become the hardy pioneers of new 

 species. 



Bateson insists that the mutational variation represents a 

 change of loss. "Almost all that we have seen," he says, "are 

 variations in which we recognize that elements have been 

 lost." {Science, Jan. 20, 1922, p. 59.) In his Address to the 

 British Association (1914), he cites numerous examples tend- 

 ing to show that mutant characters are but diminutions or 

 intensifications of characters pre-existent in the wild or normal 

 stock, all of which are explicable as effects of the loss (total 

 or partial) of either positive, or inhibitive (epistatic) heredi- 

 tary factors (genes). One of these instances illustrating the 



