28o STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS 



assumes that natural selection works by the preservation of large 

 individual variations, ' sports ' as they are often termed ; whereas 

 both Darwin himself, and all his followers, entirely reject these as 

 causes of modification of species (except perhaps in rare cases 

 where they may initiate new organs) and rely wholly on those 

 individual variations which occur by thousands and tens of 

 thousands in every generation.' 



It may be heresy to say so, but it does not follow that Darwin 

 and his followers are right. 



Professor W. Kitchen Parker was a follower of Darwin, yet in 

 his Mammalian Descent, p. 93, he says : ' Nature does now and 

 then make amazing leaps, certain types taking on sudden meta- 

 morphorses, and in the fraction of a lifetime the low is transformed 

 into the high.' 



And Mr. Camille Dareste, another follower of Dawrin, writes;^ 

 ' Aujourd'hui le plus grand probleme de I'histoire naturelle est 

 celui de I'origine des formes innombrables sous lesquelles la vie 

 s'est manifestee a la surface de la terre. Si ce probleme est soluble, 

 il ne pent I'etre que par la connaissance de la teratologic et de la 

 teratogdnie ; c'est-a-dire, par I'etude de toutes les formes nouvelles 

 qui peuvent deriver d'une forme specifique primitive, et des causes 

 qui ddterminent leur apparition.' 



Dr. Wallace and others then hold to the notion that species 

 have come about solely by gradual accumulation of useful charac- 

 ters, and only very exceptionally by what may be called 'jumps ' ; 

 yet nothing seems clearer than that 'jumps' have occurred in the 

 past,— and may occur now — which, if advantageous in the struggle 

 for life, may have laid the foundation of new types. Nothing 

 is clearer than the fact that a monstrosity may be inherited, and 

 survive even when it crosses with normal forms ; and the notion 



^ In a Preface to M. Guinard's Pricis de Teratologic, p. ix. 



