SOME NEW BOOKS. 



Mr. Bateson on Variation. 



Materials for the Study of Variation, Treated with Especial Regard to 

 Discontinuity in the Origin of Species. By William Bateson, M.A., Fellow 

 of St. John's College, Cambridge. London: Macmillan & Co., 1894. Price 21s. net t. 



Those who have been following the progress of the science of 

 morphology in recent years must have noticed a change in its attitude 

 and methods, a change to which Natural Science has repeatedly 

 called attention. The details of Comparative Anatomy and Embryo- 

 logy are being investigated with continued enthusiasm, but there is 

 a chastened spirit in the matter of basing huge generalisations upon 

 particular facts. In the study of the cell and nucleus, and of the 

 physical nature of protoplasm, results so novel and so interesting are 

 being obtained, that no doubt we over-estimate greatly their theoretical 

 importance. But the other results of microscopy certainly we do 

 not exaggerate. The centre of gravity of morphological investigation 

 is changing. Many are working at what Professor Lankester 

 aptly called Bionomics, the study of organisms as they actually 

 live ; others are making experimental enquiries in teratology, in 

 cross-breeding, on the ovum and spermatozoon, and Mr. Bateson, 

 Professor Weldon, and others are studying variation in new ways. 

 All these are matters which, in the first enthusiasm for studying 

 anatomy and embryology in the new light of Darwinism, morpholo- 

 gists considered questions for the curious rather than for the scientific. 

 But as Mr. Bateson insists in his preface, the problem of species has 

 not been solved by anatomy and embryology, and we must turn to 

 new ways for new lights. In discussing Mr. Bateson's book, I shall 

 endeavour rather to give an account of it than to present in detail 

 many objections to his method of argument. For whether or no it 

 is on Mr. Bateson's lines that the problem of species will find solu- 

 tion, undoubtedly his ingenious and careful work should serve to 

 stimulate many to a side of biological inquiry too long neglected. 

 Let me, then, endeavour to present the main lines of his argument. 

 The salient feature of life is that the forms of living things are 

 diverse. Those who study groups may differ as to which characters 

 are specific, but the naturalist and the man in the street are agreed 

 that species are different kinds of animals not to be confounded. 

 Species are what Mr. Bateson calls " discontinuous" in the main, 

 although occasionally linking forms and doubtful cases occur. Next, 

 it is obvious that specific forms fit, on the whole, the places in which 

 they have to live. The third simple fact is that in the succession from 

 parent to offspring variation occurs. Mr. Bateson assumes the doctrine 

 of descent, or, as he puts it, that the specific differences between 

 species and species have come about through, and are compounded 

 of, the individual differences between parent and offspring. He 

 assumes it because there is a balance of evidence in its favour, 



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