234 DARWIN AND PALEONTOLOGY 



ADAPTATION 



Adaptive nature of certain new origins. Dar- 

 "win's hypothesis of the selection of variations 

 lacking direction is essentially a law of chance. 

 Origins of many kinds and in many places 

 should be observed; the principle of trial and 

 error should be seen in operation; paleontology 

 should be an especially favorable field for such 

 observation. Yet, as noted above, the mutation 

 law of Waagen and the identical or similar rec- 

 tigradation law of Osborn is essentially a prin- 

 ciple of definiteness and determinateness from the 

 beginning. 



Definiteness is not necessarily adaptiveness. 

 The novel feature of Osborn's observations in 

 1889 on the cusps of the teeth appears to consist 

 in the demonstration of this element of adaptive- 

 ness ; ^ the new element is not merely determi- 

 nate, but it is leading directly to utihty, and will 

 at a later stage be useful. Thus vertebrate pale- 

 ontology enables us to estabhsh the law that cer- 

 tain origins are adaptive in direction from the 

 beginning; namely, the law of rectigradation. 



Such origins of new characters are chiefly 

 numerical; something is added to the organ or 

 to the organism which did not exist before in vis- 



' " Certain Principles of Progressively Adaptive Variation 

 Observed in Fossil Series." Biological Section of the British Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science, British Association 

 Reports, 1894, p. 643 (titie) ; Nature, Vol. SO, No. 1296, August, 

 30, 1894, p. 435. 



