September 9, 1909] 



NA TURE 



,17 



of his friend and fellow-worker, Karl Pearson, of a great 

 school of eugenics and statistics in London. With the 

 beginning of the twentieth century came the re-discovery 

 of Mendel's facts, and with that an immediate and 

 enormous outburst of enthusiasm and of work. Mendel 

 has placed a new instrument in the hand of the breeder, 

 an instrument which, when he has learnt to use it, will 

 give him a power over all domesticated animals and culti- 

 vated crops undreamt of before. We are getting a new 

 insight into the working of heredity, and we are acquiring 

 a new conception of the individual. The few years which 

 have elapsed since men's attention was re-directed to the 

 principles first enunciated by the Abbot of Briinn have seen 

 a great school of genetics arise at Cambridge under the 

 stimulating energy of Bateson, and an immense amount 

 of work has also been done in France, Holland, Austria, 

 and especially in the United States. As the work has 

 advanced, new ideas have arisen and earlier formed ones 

 have had to be abandoned ; this must be so with every 

 advancing science ; but it has now become clear that 

 mutations occur and exist especially in cultivated species, 

 and that they breed true seems now to be established. In 

 wild species also they undoubtedly occur, but whether they 

 are so common (in uncultivated species) remains to be seen. 

 If they are not, in my opinion a most profitable line of 

 research would be to endeavour to determine what factor 

 exists in cultivation which stimulates mutation. 



To what extent Darwin's writings would have been 

 modified had Mendel's work come into his hands we can 

 never know. He carefully considered the question of 

 mutation, or, as they called it then, saltation, and as time 

 went on he attached less and less importance to these 

 variations as factors in the origin of species. Ray 

 Lankester has recently reminded us that Darwin's disciple 

 and expounder, Huxley, " clung to a little heresy of his 

 own as to the occurrence of evolution by saltatory varia- 

 tion," and there must have been frequent and prolonged 

 discussion on the point. That " little heresy " has now 

 become the orthodoxy of a number of eager and thoughtful 

 workers who are at times rather aggressive in their 

 attacks on the supporters of the old creed. " That muta- 

 tions occur and exist is obvious to everyone, but that they 

 are of frequent occurrence under purely natural conditions 

 is," Sir William Thiselton-Dyer thinks, " unsupported by 

 evidence." The delicate adjustment between an organism 

 and its natural surroundings suggests that sudden change 

 of a marked kind would lead to the extinction of the 

 mutating individual. So far as I can understand the 

 matter in dispute, Darwin and his followers held that evolu- 

 tion had proceeded by small steps, for which we may accept 

 de Vries's term fluctuations ; whilst the Mutationists hold 

 that it has advanced by large ones, or mutations. But it 

 is acknowledged that mutations are not all of the same 

 magnitude, some, e.g. albinism, brachydactyly in man, 

 dwarf habit or glabrousness in plants, may be large ; 

 others, e.g. certain differences in shade of colour or in 

 size, are insignificant, and indeed Punnett has suggested 

 that under the head of fluctuating variation we are deal- 

 ing with two distinct phenomena. He holds that " some 

 of the so-called fluctuations are in reality mutations, whilst 

 others are due to environmental influence." He thinks 

 the evidence that these latter are transmitted is slender, 

 and later states that " Evolution takes place through the 

 action of selection on these mutations. Where there are 

 no mutations there can be no evolution." The disagree- 

 ment about the way in which evolution has proceeded has 

 perhaps arisen from a misunderstanding as to the nature 

 of the two kinds of variation described respectively as 

 mutations and fluctuations. Mutations are variations 

 arising in the germ-cells and due to causes of which we 

 are wholly ignorant ; fluctuations are variations arising in 

 the body or " soma " owing to the action of external con- 

 ditions. The former are undoubtedly inherited, the latter 

 are very probably not. But since mutations (using the 

 word in this sense) may be small and mav appear similar 

 in character to fluctuations, it is not always possible to 

 separate the two things by inspection alone. The whole 

 matter is well illustrated by the work of Johannsen on 

 beans. He found that while the beans borne by any one 

 plant vary largely in size, yet if a large and a small bean 

 from the same plant are sown, the mean size and varia- 



NO. 2080, VOL. 81] 



bility of the beans on the plants so produced will be the 

 same. The differences in size are presumably due to- 

 differences of condition, and are not inherited. But if two 

 beans are sown, one from a plant v^ith beans of large 

 average size, and one from a bean of small average size, 

 the bean plant the parent of which had the high average 

 will bear larger beans than the one from the parent with 

 small average beans. The faculty of producing a high 

 or low mean size is congenital, is a mutation in the sense 

 used above, and is inherited. It is no doubt unfortunate 

 that the word mutation has been used in several different 

 senses, for it seems to have led to most regrettable con- 

 fusion and misunderstanding. 



."^s I have said, in such a year, and in my position, I 

 ought perhaps to have devoted the whole of this address 

 to the more philosophical side of our subject ; but, in 

 truth, I am no philosopher, and I can only say, as Mr. 

 Oliver Edwards, " an old fellow-collegian " of Dr. John- 

 son's, said to the " great lexicographer " when they met 

 after nearly half a century of separation : "I have tried 

 too in my time to be a philosopher, but I don't know how, 

 cheerfulness was always breaking in." 



II. 



Organising Zoology. 



I now turn to a subject of the greatest moment and 

 of the greatest difficulty, and one on which there is Uttle 

 general consensus of opinion. The question I wish to 

 raise is this — are the zoologists of the world setting about 

 their task in an economic and efficient way? 



We live surrounded by a disappearing fauna. Species 

 are disappearing from the globe at a greater rate than 

 even the most ardent mutationist claims they are appear- 

 ing. To mention but a few striking cases : The European 

 beaver has almost gone, though a few linger on around 

 the periphery of the Continent. Norway, the lower 

 Danube, Eastern and Arctic Russia still harbour them, 

 and a very few are said still to inhabit the Rhine and the 

 Rhone. The European bison is now represented by a few 

 wild specimens in the Caucasus. The American bison is 

 reduced, and that by the deliberate and calculated action 

 of man, to a few herds most carefully preserved by Govern- 

 ment ; the largest of these, containing some 600 heads, is 

 now at the National Park at Wainwright. Equally 

 deliberate and equally calculated is the destruction of the 

 fur-seal, which threatens soon to be complete. The Green- 

 land sealing is almost a thing of the past. In i860 British 

 vessels killed 68,278 seals; in 1S66, 103,578; and this 

 went on until 1S95, when the pursuit was abandoned by 

 the British, it being no longer found to pay them, though 

 Norwegians still continue " sealing." In 1859 19 vessels 

 sailing from British ports killed 148 whales; in i88i 12 

 vessels killed 48 whales ; last year 6 Dundee vessels 

 killed but 15, and the year before that but 3. The whalers 

 sailing from Newfoundland ports killed 1275 whales in 

 1904, 892 in 1905, and only 429 in 1906. 



At the present time certain Norwegian whaling com- 

 panies have been for the last few years actively at work 

 in the Shetlands, and are killing off as fast as they can 

 the common rorqual (Balaenoptera mtisculatus, L.), the 

 lesser rorqual (B. rostrata), Sibbald's rorqual (B. sibbaldi. 

 Gray), the cachalot (Physeter macrocephalus, L.), the 

 humped-back whale (Megaptera hoops, L.), and, when they 

 can reach him, the Atlantic right whale (Balaena mysti- 

 cetus, L.). These are killed primarily for their blubber, 

 but the economy of the factories rivals that of the Chicago 

 pork-packing industries. Nothing is wasted ; the flesh is 

 made into sausages, which are readily eaten in Central 

 Europe, and the bones are ground up to make maaure. 

 No animal which produces but few young can withstand 

 such persistent and organised attacks on the part of man, 

 and I fear, before many years are passed, many species 

 of whale will be extinct. At the present moment the two 

 right whales seem almost on the verge of extinction, and 

 Balaena mysticetns will probably go before B. atistralis. 

 Nothing shows this more clearly than the price of whale- 

 bone, which has gone up in the last eighty-four years frorn 

 56!. per ton to 2100;. per ton, or from 12 cents a pound to 

 490 dollars, and in some years to 580 dollars a pound. 

 The number of pounds on sale in the United States has 

 dropped from 2,916,500 in 1851 to 96,600 in; 1906.; With 



