August 11, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



167 



For centuries environment and potential 

 variability were in static balance ; variation 

 was zero. 



Then came Commodore Perry, humilia- 

 tions to the inordinate pride of a hermit 

 nation, defeats, contempt, a tremendous re- 

 sponse to the changes in stimuli, and to-day 

 dark pagan Japan is easily defeating the 

 largest European Christian white nation: 

 variability unchanged, variation the great- 

 est recorded in human history. 



According to Quetelet's celebrated law 

 of variability published some years after 

 Darwin's 'Origin of Species,' it is subject 

 to the law of probability, and according to 

 this law the occurrence of variations, their 

 frequency and their degree of variation 

 can be calculated and predicted in the same 

 way as the chance of death, of murders, of 

 fires. 



But such applications did not fit actual 

 evolution, since the law is to deal with dif- 

 ferent degrees of the same qualities, giving 

 a continuity production of species, while 

 as de Vries has so stressed, the origin may 

 be by abrupt jumps, by sports, by muta- 

 tions. 



De Vries has said that a thorough study 

 of Quetelet's law would no doubt at once 

 have revealed the weak point in Darwin's 

 conception of the process of evolution. It 

 would have shown that the phenomena 

 which are ruled by this law and ^vhich are 

 bound to such narrow limits, can not be 

 a basis for the explanation of the origin of 

 species. 



It rules the degrees and amounts of qual- 

 ities, but not the qualities themselves. 



Species, however, as de Yries says, are 

 not in the main distinguished from their 

 allies by quantities, nor by degrees ; the 

 very qualities differ. 



How such differences of qualitative char- 

 acter have been created is the burning ques- 

 tion. They have not been explained by 



continuous accretion of individual varia- 

 tions. 



The attitude of the new mathematics 

 strongly favors attempts like the mutation 

 theory, based on the abrupt, explosive 

 changes, wholly discrete, Avhich under the 

 name of 'sports' had long been observed 

 and known in horticulture and animal 

 breeding, and of which De Vries has found 

 a whole fusilade being shot off by 'La- 

 marck's evening primrose.' 



Here he says there is no gradual, no 

 continuous change or modification, nor even 

 a common change of all the individuals. 

 On the contrary, he says, the main group 

 remains wholly unaffected by the produc- 

 tion of new species. After eighteen years 

 it is absolutely the same as at the beginning. 

 It is not changed in the slightest degree. 

 Yet it produces in the same locality, and at 

 the same time, from the same group of 

 plants, a number of new species diverging 

 in different ways. 



The vastly vaunted natural selection, 

 then, can only destroy new species, never 

 create them. 



George Bruce Halsted. 

 Kejstyon College, 

 Gambiee, Ohio. 



THE ADJIISSION OF STUDENTS TO COLLEGE 

 BY CERTIFICATE} 



Which is better: the western plan of 

 admitting students to colleges and univer- 

 sities by certificates from duly inspected 

 secondary schools, or the eastern method 

 of admitting only by examinations con- 

 ducted by representative boards or other- 

 wise? 



The question assigned me as a topic is a 

 pressing one at this moment in the history 

 of American education. Within a few 

 years it may be determined which plan, 



^ Paper read before the Department of Higher 

 Education of the N. E. A., Asbury Park, N. J., 

 Friday morning, July 7, 1905. 



