EVOLUTION 1007 



thus call vegetative species and varieties, from floral ones, and next 

 to scrutinise each of these for their interactions, is a fruitful task, 

 in phanerogamic botany especially: and one finds invitations to 

 attempt the like in the animal world as well. Occasional vegetative 

 "sporting" — as of the purple beech from the green, or of columnar 

 or weeping varieties in other trees — is still unexplained; and the 

 mystery of how a common tulip-bulb may suddenly produce a fine 

 new variety of flower also remains unsolved, despite the many 

 experiments of tulip-growers; and unless our conception, of oscilla- 

 tion of vegetative and floral, explains it? 



Variations may also be studied with much advantage as altera- 

 tions of growth-times; thus may not what we call "reversions" be 

 considered as too early slowings of development ? And may not the 

 crossing of different ages, or age-types — as with Mendel's peas, 

 green and yellow, smooth or wrinkled — be of more importance than 

 Mendelians seem to recognise ? And may not rates count, as well as 

 ratios, of metabolisms in different regions, or organs ? Perhaps even 

 among the so often well-defined and elaborately detailed differences 

 of the sexes throughout plants and animals, as we have so long been 

 urging {Evolution of Sex, 1889, and Sex, 1914), which arise funda- 

 mentally from respective preponderance of Anabolism over Kata- 

 bolism in the female, and conversely for the male; as breeders and 

 others at length begin to admit. And so, too, for the frequent contrast 

 of allied species or genera as respectively feminoid or masculoid — 

 like bee and wasp, sheep and goat. Is not this also but a more 

 intimate development of the more vegetative or more floral diver- 

 gence and contrast presented above ? 



Finally, it is well to bear in mind the important suggestion made 

 by Baldwin, Lloyd Morgan, Osborn and Ward (awkwardly termed 

 "Organic Selection", but for which we have no better name), viz. 

 a reply to the extreme restriction of enduring and heritable varia- 

 tions to the germ-plasm and its genes — that climatic influences, 

 individual modifications, and experimental adaptations may not 

 only count in individual life, but towards evolution, until the 

 corresponding constitutional and germinal variations become 

 established. That such should be independent, and yet coincident, 

 would have too many chances against it; but Weismann would 

 admit that germinal change might, sometimes at least, be coinci- 

 dent; i.e. reached by the same factor as that modifying the parental 

 body. For he did not maintain his germ-plasm to be so completely 

 isolated from influence by or from the parental environment as have 

 some of his later exponents. 



Enough, however, if the whole preceding outline-discussion serves 

 to indicate that many and large fields are open to inquiry into the 

 interpretation of variations, and even of the nature and origin of 

 species. 



