Characters as Adaptive and Specific. 173 



attention which, apart from any such antecedent 

 persuasion, they deserve. For example, a few years 

 ago I incidentally stated in a paper before the 

 Linnaean Society, that " a large proportional number 

 of specific characters " are of a trivial and apparently 

 unmeaning kind, to which no function admits of being 

 assigned, and also stated that Darwin himself had 

 expressly given utterance to the same opinion. 

 When these statements were made, I did not antici- 

 pate that they would be challenged by anybody, 

 except perhaps, by Mr. Wallace. And, in order now 

 to show that my innocence at that time was not 

 due to ignorance of contemporary thought on such 

 matters, a sentence may here be quoted from a 

 paper which was read at the meeting of the 

 British Association of the same year, by a highly 

 competent systematic naturalist, Mr. Henry Seebohm, 

 and soon afterwards extensively republished. Criti- 

 cizing adversely my then recently published paper, 

 he said : 



" I fully admit the truth of this statement ; and I presume 

 that few naturalists would be prepared to deny that ' distinctions 

 of specific value frequently have reference to structures which 

 are without any utilitarian significance V " 



But since that time the course of Darwinian specu- 

 lation has been greatly influenced by the writings of 

 Weismann, who, among other respects in which he 

 out-darwins Darwin, maintains the doctrine of utility 

 as universal. In consequence of the influence which 

 these writings have exercised, I have been more 

 recently and extensively accused of " heresy " to 

 Darwinian principles, for having stated that " a large 



1 Geographical Distribution of the Family Charadriidae, p. 19. 



