178 NATURAL SCIENCE [September 
“Tt may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily 
and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest varia- 
tions; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all 
that are good.”+ This, as far as the origin of species is concerned, 
is a pure assumption; and what I contend for is, that since observa- 
tion and experiment show conclusively that variations can arise 
rapidly under one’s very eyes, there is no need to assume any other 
process whatever than the protoplasmic response to environ- 
ments. Thus, rhizomes are often recognised as being of specific or 
other diagnostic value, but when an aérial stem is made to grow 
underground, its new growth at once begins to assume the charac- 
ters of an ordinary rhizome. loots, stems and leaves normally 
living submerged have characters which are at once more or less 
assumed by a terrestrial plant if it be made to grow in water, and 
vice versé; or if a water plant send a shoot into the air the change 
is abrupt at the level of the water. Plants in damp places are often 
very different as a whole from those in excessively dry situations. 
Reverse their positions and each at once begins to assume the 
characters of the other as soon as they grow in response to their 
surroundings. If lowland plants or their seeds be grown in 
high alpine regions they at once assume the facies of normal 
alpine plants. The markedly peculiar features of desert plants at 
once begin to break down, when a normally desert plant is grown 
in ordinary soil, just as the wild carrot or parsnip may quickly 
acquire the characteristic features of the cultivated form. 
If Darwin had fully realised the significance of these and such 
like facts, he could hardly have continued the above passage with ~ 
the following words :—*“ We see nothing of these slow changes in 
progress, until the hand of time has marked the lapse of ages; and 
then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we 
see only that the forms of life are now different from what they 
formerly were.”? That all this is due to natural selection is 
simply an unverified deduction. 
Self-adaptation, by Response to the Definite Action of 
Changed Conditions of Life, the True Origin of Species— 
That plants vary by self-adaptation to a new environment is proved 
by inductive evidence and amply verified by experiment. 
Let me repeat.—The struggle for life is incessant. Apart from 
ill-luck, which applies to all alike, the weaker in constitution are 
often expunged, while the stronger survive and the general dis- 
tribution of plants in time and space is the result. This however, 
as Darwin insisted, is a quite different thing from the origin of 
species. 
The origin of species is due, for the most part, or as a broad 
1¢¢ Origin, etc.,” p. 65. 2 ¢¢ Origin, etc.,”’ p. 66. 
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