xxxvi MUTATION, MENDELISM, ETC. 



6. No Essential Divergence between Mendelism and 

 Natural Selection. 



The divergence between the Darwinian and the 

 Mendelian has been exaggerated. Differences have been 

 assumed that do not exist. Thus Bateson, after explain- 

 ing that the blue Andalusian fowl is the heterozygote pro- 

 duct of mating a black parent with a parent of a peculiar 

 white, and that it splits up into the parental strains on the 

 Mendelian principle (see pp. xxix,xxx), continues:' Selection 

 will never make the blues breed true ; nor can this ever 

 come to pass unless a blue be found whose germ-cells are 

 bearers of the blue character-^-which may or may not be 

 possible. If the selectionist reflect on this experience 

 he will be led straight to the centre of our problem. 

 There will fall, as it were, scales from his eyes, and in a 

 flash he will see the true meaning of fixation of type, 

 variability, and mutation, vaporous mysteries no more.' l 

 This is really no novelty, no falling of scales from the 

 eyes, for we have been aware, ever since Weismann's 

 researches and illuminating thoughts on the germ-cells, 

 that no characters except those predetermined in the 

 germ are available for evolution. The same calm 

 appropriation by Bateson of Weismann's conclusions 

 is seen in the following passage : — ' We can answer 

 one of the oldest questions in philosophy. In terms 

 of the ancient riddle, we may reply that the Owl's 

 egg existed before the Owl. . . .' 2 But the same answer 

 was given, as the outcome of Weismann's investigations, 

 long before the re-discovery of Mendel's work. The 

 following statement was first made by Weismann in 1883 : 

 ' Natural Selection, while it apparently decides between 



1 Report British Association, 1904, p. 579. 



2 Ibid., 1904, pp. 587-8. Quoted by R. H. Lock, 1. c, p. 277. 



