E. B. Poult on 349 



III. Professor E. B. Poulton 



[From report in Science, Oct. 15, 1897, of proceedings of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science.] 



'' Edward B. Poulton, M.A., F.R.S., Hope Professor of Zoology 

 in the University of Oxford, continued the discussion. He 

 began by saying that it must be admitted that the adaptation 

 of the individual to its environment during its own lifetime 

 possesses all the significance attributed to it by Professor 

 Osborn, Professor Baldwin, and Professor Lloyd Morgan. 

 These authorities justly claim that the power of the individual 

 to play a certain part in the struggle for life may constantly 

 give a definite trend and direction to evolution, and that, 

 although the results of a purely individual response to external 

 forces are not hereditary, yet indirectly they may result in the 

 permanent addition of corresponding powers to the species, 

 inasmuch as they may render possible the operation of natural 

 selection in perpetuating and increasing those inherent heredi- 

 tary variations which go farther in the same direction than the 

 powers which are confined to the individual. 



" Professor Osborn's metaphor in opening this discussion puts 

 the matter quite clearly and will be at once accepted by all 

 Darwinians. If the human species were led by fear of enemies 

 or want of food to adopt an arboreal life, all the powers of 

 purely individual adaptation would be at once employed in this 

 direction and would produce considerable individual effects. 

 In fact, the adoption of such a mode of life would at first 

 depend on the existence of such powers. In this way natural 

 selection would be compelled to act along a certain path, and 

 would be given time in which to produce hereditary changes 

 in the direction of fitness for arboreal life. These changes 

 would probably at first be chiefly functional, as Mr. Cunning- 

 ham has argued (in the Preface to his Translation of Eimer). 

 On these principles we can understand the arboreal kangaroo 

 (Dondrolagus) found in certain islands of the Malay Archi- 

 pelago, which is apparently but slightly altered from the terres- 



