DARWINISM ATTACKED. 73 



fended"), this criticism was long ago met by Delboeuf, who 

 claimed to show mathematically that, however feeble may be 

 the number of varying individuals compared with those 

 non-varying, the number of the varying will always be 

 increasing and will finish by being greater than that of the 

 individuals holding to the type. Delage holds "Delboeuf's 

 law" to be false as regards its attempted general applica- 

 tion to the selection of variation, conceding it to hold true 

 only in the hypothetical case where a persistent active modi- 

 fying cause influences for some reason but a part of the 

 individuals of a species. And Delage cannot conceive of a 

 cause endowed with such an attribute. 



An objection that has been often made to the natural 

 selection theory may be put in the following general form : 



It may be granted that selection can make evolu- 

 Selection may 

 produce evolution tion, i. e., adaptive change or progress, but this 



chan 1 e)but not wil1 ^ G done m SUcl1 a Way aS tO leaVC a COn " 



species (discon- tinuous chain or series. How is the chain 

 nes)l broken into species ? Are all our species simply 

 the existent ends of series or chains? But we see many 

 chains or series of discontinuous but obviously connected 

 species. Natural selection can make evolution but not 

 species. Darwin himself couched this objection more con- 

 cisely as follows : "Why, if species have descended from 

 other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see 

 innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in 

 confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well 

 defined?" 



Professor Morgan, in his "Evolution and Adaptation," 

 discusses this objection in the following paragraphs (pp. 

 129-131): 



"The answer that Darwin gives [to his own just quoted 

 query] is, that by competition the new form will crowd out 

 its own less-improved parent form, and other less-favoured 

 forms. But is this a sufficient or satisfactory answer? If 



