316 THE THEORIES OF EVOLUTION 



degree. The whole group changes its character, ac- 

 quiring new attributes. By intercrossing they 

 maintain a common line of progress, one individual 

 never being able to proceed much ahead of the others. 

 The birth of the new species necessarily seemed to in- 

 volve the death of the old one. On the contrary, the 

 vast majority remains unchanged; thousands are seen 

 exactly repeating the original prototype yearly, both 

 in the native field and in my garden. There is no 

 danger that lamarckiana might die out from the act 

 of mutating, nor that the mutating strain itself 

 would be exposed to ultimate destruction from this 

 cause." 



"Another phase of the opposition between the pre- 

 vailing view and my own results seems far more im- 

 portant. According to the current belief the con- 

 version of a group of plants growing in any locality 

 and flowering simultaneously would be restricted to 

 one type. In my own experiments several new spe- 

 cies arose from the parental form at once, giving a 

 wide range of new forms at the same time and under 

 the same conditions." 



"III. New elementary species attain their full 

 constancy at once, that is, transmit all their characters 

 to their progeny independently of any external con- 

 dition." 



"IV. Some of the new strains are evidently ele- 



