156 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [MAR. 5, 
wick, Boston Institute of Technology; Prof. William Libbey, 
Princeton College. These names were referred to the Council. 
The Section of Biology then organized. In the absence of 
its chairman, Prof. Osborn, Prof. Britton was elected temporary 
chairman. The discussion of the evening was devoted to the 
modern doctrine of evolution, especially as to the transmission 
of acquired characters. 
Prof. Poulton introduced the discussion in favor of natural 
selection. He noted that individual variation, however produced, 
was the requirement of selection, and that the Neo-Lamarckians 
had as yet failed to demonstrate the inheritance of acquired 
characters. Their objection to the development of structures 
to the degree when they became useful, was one rarely to be 
applied. Nature is adaptive oftener than originative. But even 
where these structures first develop, they are probably to some 
degree useful. Palszeontology should provide records of selective 
failures, but with its fragmentary records this would be difficult 
to expect. If, however, evidence of survival of individuals is 
lacking, such evidence is retained for groups. The Lamarckian 
objection is that no cause is a true cause which merely selects ; 
that origin of the fittest is not thereby explained. But this in- 
terpretation must be a faulty one; selection selects the minutest 
variations, it builds and does not merely pick. Offspring are 
the mean product of parents and of the tendency to reversion, 
but selection may overcome the reversion. It operates on the 
entire organism, not on one of its parts, as Spencer had ob- 
jected. 
Natural selection is demonstrated in the known evolution of 
breeds, as of domestic animals, and negatively by the lack of 
transmission of acquired characters. Mutilations are not trans- 
mitted even, as in the flat-head Indians where their recurrence 
is long existing. Inheritance of proneness to disease is inter- 
pretable as inheritance of constitutional inability to resist it. 
Selection employs its two factors, use and disease, to produce 
certain effects, and they do not militate against it. A lobster 
shedding its claw ora lizard its tail, to divert the enemy, are 
