Anaholism and Specialisation. 195 



XVI. Anaholism and Specialisation. By Cecil B. Crampton, 



M.B., CM. 



(Received 1st March 1904; read 28th March 1904.) 



In a paper entitled "A Suggestion on Extinction/' which 

 was read before the Eoyal Physical Society in March 1901, 

 I attempted to point out that there might be some connec- 

 tion between the bad effects produced by long-continued 

 in-breeding and the weakness which appears to be the result 

 of long-continued specialisation within narrow limits. I also 

 stated that it was the opinion of many that no form of life 

 can undergo repeated fission, budding, or self-fertilisation, 

 indefinitely, without bringing about its own extermination. 

 That there seems to be a necessity, sooner or later, for some 

 sort of blend to occur to prevent the dying out of the stock, 

 and that as we proceed from forms of less specialisation to 

 those of greater specialisation, there is an increasing necessity 

 for this blend. Towards the end of the paper I tried to 

 convey by the expression " potential variation," the dormant 

 power of variation possessed by primitive protoplasm, which, 

 played upon by natural selection, has led to such different 

 results as a plant, an insect, a mollusc, and so forth. An 

 insect has no powers of evolving into a vertebrate, nor one 

 of the higher plants into a mollusc. These seem, therefore, 

 in common with all other forms which have undergone 

 specialisation, to have lost some of the possibilities of varia- 

 tion in comparison with the primitive protoplasm, or they 

 have less potential variation than in the original condition. 



In reconsidering the position there taken up, it seemed 

 that by restating this potential of variation in terms of 

 metabolism, we might obtain a better view as to the different 

 relations which plants and animals bear to the question. 

 Since while animals through specialisation, along with an 

 increasing necessity for cross-fertilisation, show an increasing 

 loss of asexual powers of reproduction, in plants, while the 

 first appears to be true, the second appears to be exactly the 

 reverse. Professors Geddes and Thomson, in their very 

 interesting and suggestive book, "The Evolution of Sex," 

 have formulated the antithesis of anaholism and katabolism 



