Eoolut'wn uf Animal Life. 155 



ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 



Dr. Robert G. Eccles : — 



Professor Eaymond's method of presenting the subject strikes 

 me as the most incisive and best of any I have ever read or 

 listened to. It displays marked originality of arrangement and a 

 keen, clear appreciation of the subject in every detail. The meth- 

 od pursued in showing the evidence from embryology is particu- 

 larly lucid, and no doubt perfectly understood by all present even 

 though entirely new to some. 



I am pleased to note that Dr. Piaymond is among the progres- 

 sive evolutionists who liave accepted Professor E. D. Cope's "Xeo- 

 Lamarckisin."" No purely mechanical theory can ever explain the 

 present arrangement of things; and the evidence is multiplying 

 that shows mind to be an active participant in the moulding pro- 

 cess in the development of animal forms. Their desires and feel- 

 ings direct their actions, and these in turn alter tlieir shapes, 



I think that the speaker of the evening made a little too much 

 of the argument from the infertility of crossed species. Darwin 

 himself has shown that so far was this from being an insuperable 

 objection, that, instead, it is just what we might expect in an evo- 

 lutionary system. The only reason why we have not artificially 

 produced infertile crosses, is the shortness of the time during 

 which we have been experimenting. In the plant world, where 

 generation is more rapid, it has been shown that there is a degree 

 of kinship at which fertility is at its maximum, and that from this 

 it shades oiT in both directions toward greater and greater infer- 

 tility. The most remote will not blend at all. Those nearer will 

 blend, but produce infertile progeny. Approach nearer still, and 

 the progeny will run out in a generation or two. At the max- 

 imum point no known limit is found. Get nearer than this, and 

 fertility again diminishes ; we find some highly differentiated 

 species infertile to their own pollen. Experiments have shown 

 that artificial selection travels along this line, only it has not had 

 time to reach the point of remote total infertility, or even that of 

 infertility after a generation. Had the piniter pigeon been select- 

 ed with reference to generation as it has in reference to shape, it 

 is not unlikely that we would have had in it a true new species. 

 It is manifestly impossible in an hour's talk to refer to every phase 



