DARWIN AND PALEONTOLOGY 



tions is probably par excellence a field of research 

 for the biometrieian and the experimentalist 

 rather than for the paleontologist. 



ORIGIN OF NEW CHARACTERS 



We now reach a turning point and pass from 

 differences of proportion, of development, and 

 of degeneration, to the origin of new characters. 



Origin of new characters not by selection of 

 the fit from the fortuitous. When, however, this 

 focal point of the selection of minute variations 

 is pressed home as an hypothesis of the origin of 

 all new adaptive characters, then paleontology 

 ceases to be either neutral, silent, or inconclusive, 

 and gives to Darwinism a most emphatic nega- 

 tive. In all the research since 1869 on the trans- 

 formations observed in closely successive phyletic 

 series no evidence whatever, to my knowledge, 

 has been brought forward by any paleontologist, 

 either of the vertebrated or invertebrated ani- 

 mals, that the fit originates by selection from the 

 fortuitous. 



Lest the statement be made that this is truly 

 the sanctum sanctorum of Darwin's theory of 

 adaptation, let me recall the historical fact ^ that 

 fitness for twenty-five centuries had been the 

 stumbhng block of those who sought a natural- 

 istic interpretation of nature ; that Kant ^ had 



^ Osborn, H. F.; From the Greeks to Darwin. An Outline of 

 the Development of the Evolution Idea, Vol. 1 of the Columbia 

 University Biological Series, 8vo, Maomillan, 3rd ed., p. 348. 



' Ibid, p. 100. 



