774 REPORT—1899, 
In fact it must have been progressively greater the farther we go back from the 
present time. 
The argument which I have just laid before you points, if carried to its logical 
conclusion—and I see no reason why it should not be so carried—to the view that 
at the first origin of life upon the earth the variability of living matter consequent 
upon the act of conjugation must have been of enormous range: in other words, it 
points to the view that heredity was a much less important phenomenon than it is 
at present. Following out the same train of thought, we are inevitably driven to 
the conclusion that one of the most important results of the evolutionary change 
has been the gradual increase and perfection of heredity as a function of organisms 
and a gradual elimination of variability. 
This view, if it can be established, is of the utmost importance to our theoretical 
conception of evolution, because it enables us to bring our requirements as to time 
within the limits granted by the physicists. If variation was markedly greater in 
the early periods of the existence of living matter, it is clear that it would have 
been possible for evolutionary change to have been effected much more rapidly than 
at present—especially when we remember that the world was then comparatively 
unoccupied by organisms, and that with the change of conditions consequent on 
the cooling and differentiation of the earth’s surface, new places suitable for 
organic life were continually being formed. It will be observed that the conclusion 
we have now reached, viz. that variation was much greater near the dawn of life . 
than it is now, and heredity a correspondingly less important phenomenon, is a 
deduction from the selection theory. It becomes, therefore, of some interest to 
inquire whether a suggestion obtained by a perfectly legitimate mode of reasoning 
receives any independent confirmation from other sources. The first source of 
facts to which we turn for such confirmation must obviously be paleontology. 
But paleeontology unfortunately affords us no help. The facts of this science are 
too meagre to be of any use. Indeed, they are wanting altogether for the period 
which most immediately concerns us—namely, the period when the existing forms 
of life were established. This took place in the prefossiliferous period, for in the 
earliest fossiliferous rocks examples of almost all existing groups of animals are 
met with. 
But although paleontology affords us no assistance, there is one class of facts 
which, when closely scrutinised, does lend some countenance to the view that when 
evolutionary change was at its greatest activity, 7.c. when the existing forms of 
life were being established, variation was considerably greater than it is at the 
present day. 
But as this address has already exceeded all reasonable limits, and as the 
question which we are now approaching is one of very great complexity and 
difficulty, I am reluctantly compelled to defer the full consideration and treatment 
of it to another occasion. I can only hope that the far-reaching importance of my 
subject and the interest of it may to some extent atone for the great length which 
this address has attained, 
APPENDIX. 
The following observations on the condition of the male reproductive organs in 
highly variable plants are quoted from Darwin’s ‘ Variation of Animals and Plants 
under Domestication,’ vol. il. pp. 256 et seq. 
Tn certain plant hybrids which are highly variable, it is known that the anthers 
contain many irregular pollen-grains. Exactly the same fact has been noticed by 
Max Wichura in many of our highly cultivated plants which are extremely 
variable, and which there is no reason to believe have been hybridised, such as the 
hyacinth, tulip, snapdragon, potato, cauliflower, &c. 
The same observer also ‘finds in certain wild forms the same coincidence 
between the state of the pollen and a high degree of variability, as in many 
species of Rubus; but in R. cesius and zdeus, which are not highly variable 
