xl MUTATION, MENDELISM, ETC. 



fingers, double hands and feet, abnormal horns, displaced 

 appendages, etc. — which form so large a part of a 

 work 1 whose object is to assist in solving the problem of 

 Species. I am very far from undervaluing the study 

 of such material, but its high importance and interest 

 consist in the light thrown upon the development of the 

 individual, and not upon the question as put by Bateson 

 himself : ' How have living things become what they are, 

 and what are the laws which govern their forms ? ' 



Not only does the leader of Mendelism in this country 

 appropriate the discoveries and illuminating thoughts of 

 Weismann, but he also erroneously claims the protecting 

 aegis of Darwin. Thus in 1904 he said : ' Darwin gave 

 us sound teaching when he compared man's selective 

 operations with those of Nature.' 2 But this statement 

 gives an entirely wrong impression of Darwin's views. 

 Darwin even tells us that he was ' deceived by single 

 variations offering such simple illustrations, as when man 

 selects '. And from the first he had always thought the 

 minute differences between individuals of more importance 

 for Natural Selection and Evolution than the large, simple 

 variations on which man relies. After reading Fleeming 

 Jenkin's article in the North British Review for June 

 1867, he concluded that the individual differences are 

 paramount. 3 I am here referring to Darwin's views, not 



1 On Variation. 



2 Report British Association, 1904, p. 577. The error of his leader 

 has been repeated by R. H. Lock only so recently as Nov. 14, 1907. 

 In a letter to Nature of that date he writes : — 



' If Dr. Archdall Reid discards Darwin's opinion, based as it was 

 upon an unequalled experience, that domestic and natural varieties have 

 arisen by essentially the same process, he may find himself landed among 

 a crowd of unsuspected difficulties.' 



3 Darwin wrote in a letter to Wallace, dated January 22, 1869: — 

 'I always thought individual differences more important than single 

 variations, but now I have come to the conclusion that- they are of para- 



