lii MEMOIR. 
ditions have some effect.’ I am quite ready to believe it when I see any one 
experimental case, or such an accumulation of argument #70 as I think can 
be adduced cov. It is an open question, I grant. Quite so, but you must 
bring your case to the point! You say, ‘ you cannot see that the species has 
produced the same variations in all the stations,’ etc. How should I ever 
see whether or no, except you compare progress of individuals of some brood 
in each? Again, you ask, ‘If variety A succeed in locality I., why should 
it not succeed at locality II. if it had ever been existent there?’ My answer is 
that no locality II. is identical with a locality I., and that natural selection 
will act on an imperceptible difference—it searches where no faculty of man 
can follow. Consider again, and ponder well the number of individuals of 
a brood that die for every one that lives; multiply these by the countless 
generations that it must have taken to have established that amount of 
change which we call specific, and then reflect that if besides all this we are 
to have dzrect effects of local conditions, which (remember) vary in kind 
and amount from year to year, you will have such an accumulation of change- 
effecting forces that there could be no such things as recognisable species 
and genera. Not only every place would have different varieties, but every 
year in each place, and in the case of temperate plants grown in a hothouse, 
wet country plants in a dry house, etc., etc., we should have startling changes 
ever occurring. 
‘‘ Another objection to my line of argument is the changes wrought in 
bees by either feeding or heat (as the case may be), but this again is change 
of individual, and is not propagated, for the queen after all lays again males 
and drones, not queens. Darwin, I believe, holds with you as to the influence 
of external conditions on the variation of the brood. I have, however, failed 
to be convinced by him of it, and I do not think he recognises the facts of 
variation to the extent I do. Indeed, I think his book would have been more 
convincing had he treated variation somehow so as to have impressed the 
unaccustomed reader and thinker to regard it as the origin of species, and 
natural selection as the fixer of these. As it is, in most minds the two are 
confused, or natural selection is supposed to szake the varieties as well as 
to fix them. At other times, no one more stanchly denounces the effects of 
external circumstances in producing variation than Darwin does. Darwin 
also believes in some reversion to type, which is opposed to my view of 
variation. You may have a single character persist or reappear, but the 
sum of differences goes on increasing as you depart from the parent. 
Variation I hold to be centrifugal; if it were not so how could it go on 
making species, which are only the preserved forms of each brood which 
circumstances favoured? Remove the circumstances which £722 the others, 
as man does when he cultivates (kills those that nature would have spared), 
and you have what you call a variety, and fancy you made it, whereas you 
only prevented nature killing it. 
‘¢ After all, Darwin’s axiom that man has never failed in getting varieties 
of any species he has fairly tried, is in favour of my view that the abstract 
principle called variation is enough, wth time, to beget any amount of 
change, and by means of natural selection to retain only such as may 
present any amount of difference. Finally, I have come to look upon the 
law of variation as I do on gravitation: local circumstances may mask its 
