752 Letters, Extracts^ and Notes. [Ibis, 



but, from tbe position of the (Uianiiel Isbiiitls, one would 

 suppose that resident birds there would conform more 

 closely to the birds of the adjoining French coast than to 

 those of the far more distant coasts of England. In any 

 case, unless the results of comparisons made have already 

 been published somewhere, I think it can be hardly safe to 

 assume that the breeding birds of the Channel Islands are 

 all of the British form. I do not think birds pay much 



respect to political geography. 



Yours truly, 

 78 Gibbins Roatl, H. G. Alexander. 



Selby Oak, IJiriiiiugham, 

 20 July, 19i>L 



Subspecies and Evolution. 



Sir, — Without any claim to the " highly trained scientific 

 mind'' postulated for tiie critic of Colonel Meinertzhagen's 

 paper: "Some Thoughts on Subspecies and Evolution '^ in 

 the last number of 'The Ibis,' one or two points may be I'aised. 



The first is his use of the term Mutation. It is not 

 clear whether it is used in the sense of De Vries, or whether 

 it is applied (as some modei'u writers have applied it) to 

 certain characters transmitted in accordance witli Meudel's 

 Law. On p. 53.S, lines 27 and 28, it seems to refer 

 simply to monstrosities or deformities. There is also 

 apparent confusion between Mendel's discoverii-s and the 

 Germ-plasm Theoiy of Weismaiin, though the latter is oidy 

 mentioned by name once (p. 535), and then in a passage 

 which suggests a printer's error. 



A second point is, that it is not established that when 

 domesticated forms return to feral life, they always revert 

 indistinguishably to their ancestral type. This has not taken 

 place in the case of tlie Porto Santo Rabbit described by 

 ilaeckel (' History of Creation,' English translation, vol. i.). 



Thus the following (p. 532) is misleading : 



" The mutationist will argue that wiienever a domesti- 

 cated variety resumes a wild life, the originid wild stock 

 being doniinnnt to the recessive domesticated variety, such 



