BY HEBER A. LONGMAN. 3 



to say nothing of philosophic impHcations ranging from 

 rigid mechanistic conceptions to v^arious forms of vitaUsm 

 and to theological interpretations. If Darwin could 

 return to-day he would certainly need the assist nee of 

 his ■■ bull-dog " — Huxley. One wonders what the twain 

 would have thought of the remarkable uttei-ances in 

 Australia in 1914 by Professor Bateson, who is prepared 

 seriously to consider the whole course of evolution " as 

 an unpacking of an original complex which contained 

 within itself the whole range of diversity which living 

 things present."* Professor Bateson also refers 

 sympatheticall}^ to Lotsy's views that all variations may 

 be due to crossing : "' to segregation and recombination 

 of series of factors on pre-determined lines " (p. 15), or to 

 a loss of factors. He goes on to say : '"In spite of 

 seeming perversity, therefore, we have to admit that there 

 is no evolutionary change, which in the ])resent state of 

 our knowledge, we can positi\-ely declare to be not due to 

 loss.'' (p. 20). He also informs us that " competent men 

 are even denying that variation in the old sense is a genuine 

 occurrence at all "' (p. 11). 



If this view be summarily interpreted, it means that, 

 in a novel sense, there is nothing new under the sun, that 

 the course of evolution is topsy-turvy, that the microcosm 

 holds the macrocosm, that all the wealth of the world's 

 biota to-day, to say nothing of mwiad extinct forms, was 

 segregated in definite factors in the primitive life of the 

 past, that man himself Mould still be an ape had he not 

 lost pre-human factors, and that progress is invariably 

 the result of loss and not of gain. 



How will exponents of these views account for the 

 advent of new structures I To quote a few instances 

 (which might be indefinitely extended) : how does this 

 ultra-mendelian evolution account for the develoi^ment 

 of the pouch of marsupials, of the " flying-membrane "' 

 of various mannnals, of the venom fangs of snakes, of the 

 pharyngeal teeth of fishes, the copulatoiy apparatus of 

 the male dragon flyf, or, to quote a case which bears on 



*Bateson : Report British A.ssn. , Australia, 1915, p. 17. 

 tR. J. Tillyard: The Biology of Dragon Flies, 1917, p. 215 



