some time in the eighties when lack of interest compelled 

 its discontinuance. Wagner therefore misconstrues facts 

 when he asserts that there have been no specifically Dar- 

 winian researches. Since the thoughts of Darwin first found 

 expression these researches have been most abundant and 

 their results have been consigned to the printer's ink. No 

 doubt — ^and this is the salient point, which Wagner passes 

 over in complete silence— they have been of service only tc 

 the doctrine of Descent in general, and in spite of the en- 

 ergetic efforts of the Darwinians, they have never led to 

 the ardently desired proof from facts of the hypothesis of 

 selection. This and no other is the state of the case. 



In view of these vain endeavors, however, intelligent 

 investigators have gradually become perplexed and have 

 turned away from Darwinism, not because they have lost 

 interest in it nor even because they no longer feel the need 

 of it to assist the doctrine of Descent, but for the one 

 sole reason that its insufHciency has become more and more 

 apparent and that all experiments undertaken on its behalf 

 have made the fact clearer and clearer that the first criti- 

 cism of the great naturalists of the sixties and seventies iaA-K) 

 was perfectly justified. ,;<•-*.. "ft^'i ? 



In forming a judgment concerning the whole question 

 it cannot but be a matter of the utm.ost significance, that 

 men have turned away from Darwinism to entirely dififerent 

 theories of Descent. It is a mistake to suppose, as Wag- 

 ner would have us suppose, that the last decades have pro- 

 duced nothing but generalities regarding the doctrine of 



96 



