APPENDIX B 



OTHER EXPOSITIONS OF ORGANIC SELECTION AND 

 ORTHOPLASY 



I. F. W. Headley^ 



Influence of the Individual on the Evolution of the Race 



"■ A VARIATION, if it is to forward the process of evolution, 

 must have selection-value in the first individuals in which 

 it appears. A mere rudiment, to be some day, when fully 

 developed, useful to far-off descendants, is not a thing that a 

 clear-headed evolutionist can speak of seriously. The fore-limb 

 of the avian-reptilian ancestor of birds must have been service- 

 able to him as an oar or a wing or as a compound of the two. 

 It cannot have been a reptile fore-limb spoiled and a mere 

 prophecy of a wing. However imperfect, its usefulness must 

 have been in the present, not in the future. When new circum- 

 stances arise there must be, in individuals that are to survive, 

 a fairly complete adaptation ready to hand. The antelopes 

 cannot say to the cheetahs, * Give us a respite of a hundred 

 generations and we shall be able to race you.' Somehow the 

 antelope has found a way out of the difficulty. Evolutionists 

 have not always been so successful in showing how a species 

 is able to stave off an imminent peril and obtain a respite 

 during which a lucky variation may appear to save it. But now 

 Professor Mark Baldwin^ and. Professor Lloyd Morgan^ have 

 independently arrived at a theory that makes matters much 

 easier. * Though there is no transmission of modifications due 



iFrom Problems of Evolution (1901), by F. W. Headley, 1 901, Chap. IV., 

 vii., pp. 120 f. 



^American Naturalist, June, July, 1896. ^ Habit and Instinct, p. 315. 



2A 353 



