THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST 
VoL. XXXII. November, 1898. No. 383. 
VARIATION VERSUS HEREDITY: 
HENRY S. WILLIAMS. 
In proposing to discuss this subject I have no new exam- 
ples either of variation or heredity to describe, nor any new 
evidence to bring forward, with which to confirm established 
beliefs regarding these two well-known and important factors 
of biology. But I would like to call attention to a point of 
view from which variation, which we are accustomed to regard 
as a kind of accidental and abnormal performance of organisms, 
looms up into a prominence second to no other phenomenon 
of life, and stands out as the fundamental and distinctive char- 
acteristic of living beings. From this point of view, natural 
selection in all its different forms, the direct and indirect 
effects of environment, and other processes which, according 
to the orthodox view, are believed to be agencies in promoting 
evolution, appear but subsidiary steps in the acquirement of 
heredity, and are concerned only in checking evolution and 
in bringing the organism into a state of subjection to the 
mechanical laws of the physical environment in which they 
live. 
1 Read before the Section F, Zoology, American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, Boston Meeting, August, 1898. 
