330 CAPT. F. W. HUTTON ON THE PROBLEM OF UTILITY. 



The Problem of Utility. By Captain P. W. Hutton, F.E.S. 

 (Communicated by Alfred Newton, F.L.S.) 



[Read 6th May, 1897.] 



De. a. E,. Wallace has lately published in the Journal of this 

 Society * a paper witli the above title, in which he comes to the 

 conclusion that, " whether we can discover their use or no, there 

 is an overwhelming probability in favour o£ the statement that 

 every truly specific character is or has been useful ; or, if not 

 useful, is strictly correlated with such a character." I quite 

 admit the force of his argument and the weight of his facts. I 

 acknowledge that many specific characters have been shown to 

 have had a utilitarian origin ; but it seems to me that Dr. "Wallace's 

 conclusion will not be justified until it has been proved that 

 there is an overwhelming probability that no agency exists 

 capable of producing non-utilitarian characters. This, I venture 

 to think, he has not done ; and I should like to be allowed to 

 give my reasons for so thinking. 



Dr. Wallace truly says it is very difficult to determine posi- 

 tively that any one of the characters now presented by each 

 organism " is not, no?' ever has been, useful to its possessor." But 

 also it is often very diflicult to determine positively that a cha- 

 racter is, or has been, useful. These things are generally matters 

 of inference only, and in studying them we should try to make the 

 problem as simple as possible. Now what are the tests by which 

 we recognize a character as of utilitarian origin ? Dr. Wallace 

 says that any new species formed under Natural Selection must 

 exhibit either some difference of structure or function adapting 

 it to new conditions, or some distinction of colour, form, or 

 peculiar ornament serving as distinctive recognition-marks ; and 

 they may, in addition, have other characters which are correlated 

 with a useful one. 



The evidence for this last group of characters is very alight and 

 uncertain, and they cannot be very numerous. At any rate each 

 asserted case would require separate proof, and the principle of 

 correlation should not be used as a cloak for our ignorance. The 

 tests, therefore, are virtually reduced to two : adaptation and 

 recognition-marks. 



Eecogniuon-marks can be useful only among those animals 

 * Journ. Linn. Soc, Zool. vol. xxv. p. 481. 



