44 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



a pink hydrangea blue. The iron cannot be passed on to the 

 next generation. How can iron multiply itself? The power 

 to assimilate iron is all that can be transmitted. A disease- 

 producing organism like the pebrine of silkworms can in a 

 very few cases be passed on through the germ cells. But it 

 does not become part of the invaded host, and we can not 

 conceive it taking part in the geometrically ordered processes 

 of segregation. These illustrations may seem too gross; but 

 what refinement will meet the requirements of the problem, 

 that the thing introduced must be, as the living organism 

 itself is, capable of multiplication and of subordinating itself 

 in a definite system of segregation?" (Heredity, Smithson. 

 Inst. Rpt. for 1915, p. 373.) 



Nor can we agree with Prof. T. H. Morgan's contention 

 that the foregoing difficulty of Bateson has been solved by 

 the discovery of the chromosomal mutation. All unbalanced 

 chromosomal mutants are subnormal in their viability and 

 vitality, not to speak of their marked sterility. Haploidy 

 represents a regressive, rather than a progressive, step. The 

 triploid mutant is sterile. The tetraploid race of Daturas 

 is inferior in fertility to the normal diploid plant. The origin 

 of balanced tetraploidy from diploidy must be presumed, since 

 it has never been observed. Moreover, tetraploidy represents 

 only quantitative, and not qualitative, progress. The increased 

 mass of the nucleus produces an enlargement of the cytoplasm, 

 the result of which is giantism. This effect, however, is not 

 specific; for giant and normal races possessing each the same 

 number of chromosomes are known to exist in nature. Hence 

 giantism may be due to other causes besides chromosomal 

 duplication. The only effect of this doubling is a reinforcement 

 and intensification of the former effect of the genetic factors, 

 their specificity remaining unchanged. Double doses are sub- 

 stituted for single doses of the factors, but nothing really new 

 is added. Morgan himself recognizes that this mere repeti- 

 tion of identical genes is insufficient, and that their multipli- 

 cation must be qualitative as well as numerical, to answer 



