Critias7ns of Theory of Natural Selection. 361 



without any reference to utility, either present or 

 future. Among all this multitude of promiscuous 

 variations, the chances must be that some percentage 

 will prove of some service, either from the first moment 

 of their appearance, or else after they have undergone 

 some amount of development. Such development 

 prior to utility may be due, either to correlation of 

 growth, to the structure having previously performed 

 some other function, as already explained, or else to 

 a continued operation of the causes which were con- 

 cerned in the first appearance of originally useless 

 characters. In a series of chapters which will be 

 devoted to the whole question of utility in the next 

 volume, I shall hope to give very good reasons for 

 concluding that useless characters are not only of 

 highly frequent occurrence, but are due to a variety of 

 other causes besides correlation of growth. And, if so, 

 the possibility of originally useless characters happen- 

 ing in some cases to become, by increased develop- 

 ment, useful characters, is correspondingly increased. 

 Among a hundred varietal or specific characters which 

 are directly produced in as many different species by 

 a change of climate, for example, some five or six may 

 be potentially useful : that is to say, characters thus 

 adventitiously produced in an incipient form may 

 only require to be further developed by a continuance 

 of the same causes as first originated them, in order 

 that some percentage of the whole number shall become 

 of some degree of use. Those professed followers of 

 Darwin, therefore, who without any reason — or, as it 

 appears to me, against all reason — deny the pos- 

 sibility of useless specific characters in any case or 

 in any degree (unless correlated with useful characters), 



