160 SYMB10GENES1S 



because man has always selected animals or plants which vary 

 from the mean of the race more than did their fellows. 

 "Whatever else he has selected then, he has always selected 

 variability, which is just as much a character as anything else." 



If we allow " rustiness " and susceptibility to rust, etc., 

 to be classed as "characters," there is indeed no reason why 

 we should not treat " variability " in the same way. But the 

 "variability" that lends itself particularly to exploitation, as 

 instanced by the case of the relations between retrogressive 

 alga3 and retrogressive Convoluta and by the parasitic nurture 

 of domesticated races by man, must certainly be held to be a 

 bad " character." " Good" variability is slow variability. It 

 is considerate and therefore constant in character. There are 

 many ancient obligations, many enduring bio-economic 

 correspondences to be considered, and its direction is towards 

 increased direct service to the biological community. "Bad" 

 variability is regardless of the bio-economic bond, and, like 

 depravity, travels more swiftly. It is more akin to disruption 

 and similar to the dissociation of metals, which is also 

 distinguished by many startling features. 



It cannot, however, escape its fate, nor for a time help 

 being at least indirectly serviceable, being itself exploited as it 

 was " out " to exploit rather than to serve. 



Those characters which in the domesticated races behave in the 

 Mendelian manner, may therefore reasonably be considered as recent 

 variations in individuals which have been rapidly exaggerated. (Italics 

 mine.) 



We have here precisely the antithesis as constituted I 

 believe by symbiotics and anti-biotics. 



The exaggeration of recent dynamics (unfavourable or 

 negative in the bio-economic sense) has taken place at the 

 expense of former favourable positive (ancestral) dynamics, 

 and as usual with the concomitant tendencies in the direction 

 of abnormal bulk and of "large" variations we thus 

 approach the goal of extinction rather than return to the path 

 of symbiogenesis. 



