WILLIAM BATESON—MORGAN 523 
tion then took place and was favorable.’ Again, ‘the whole argu- 
ment is based on such assumptions as these—assumptions which, were 
they found in Paley or Butler, we could not too scornfully ridicule.’ 
Bateson set himself, therefore, the task of collecting and codifying 
the facts of variation as ‘the first duty of the naturalist.’ He 
brought together a great body of evidence from the literature and 
from this he reached the conclusion that the forms of living things 
taken at a given moment show a discontinuous series and not a con- 
tinuous series. He also argued that the forms of living things may 
be separated into specific groups or species, ‘the members of each 
such group being nearly alike, while they are less like the members 
of any other group.’ Assuming that the doctrine of descent is true 
in the main because of the difficulty of forming any alternative 
hypothesis as good, he then examined the theory of natural selection 
in the light of these conclusions. On the theory of natural selection 
‘specific diversity of form is consequent upon diversity of environ- 
ment and diversity of environment is thus the ultimate measure of 
diversity of specific form.’ But ‘ diverse environments often shade 
into each other insensibly and form a continuous series, whereas the 
specific forms of life which are subject to them on the whole form a 
discontinuous series.’ The magnification of this difficulty furnishes 
the basis of Batson’s critical attitude towards Darwin’s theory. 
“He points out that while the study of the adaptation of living 
things was undertaken as a test of the theory of natural selection its 
study ceases to help us at the exact point at which help is most 
needed. ‘ We are seeking for the cause of the differences between 
species and species and it is precisely on the utility of specific differ- 
ences that the students of adaptation are silent. For, as Darwin and 
many others have often pointed out, the characters which visibly 
differentiate species are not as a rule capital facts in the constitution 
of vital organs, but more often they are just those features which 
seem to us useless and trivial * * *,” ‘In the early days of the 
theory of natural selection it was hoped that with searching the 
direct utility of such small differences would be found, but time has 
been running now and the hope is unfulfilled.’ ‘ Hence though the 
study of adaptation will always remain a fascinating branch of 
natural history it is not and can not be a means of directly solving 
the origin of species.’ 
“ Bateson’s general conclusion is summed up in the statement 
‘that the discontinuity of which species is an expression has its 
origin not in the environment nor in any phenomenon of adaptation 
but in the intrinsic nature of organisms themselves manifested in the 
original discontinuity of variation.’ ‘The discontinuity of species 
results from the discontinuity of variation.’ ” * 
* Science, Vol. LXIII, pp. 531-533, 1926. 
