NO. 506] DAHWJX AM) Ml TAT 1 <>X TllKOHY 



83 



structure of the young in relation to the parent, and of 

 the parent in relation to the young. " :;r ' "Natural Selec- 

 tion . . . will destroy any individual departing from 

 the proper type." ;iC If Darwin had adopted the simile 

 of a sieve, so effectively used by De Vries, he would have 

 drawn nearer to the recognition of the fact of "selection 

 between species," even if he had not been prepared to 

 assent to De Vries 's counter proposition that there is no 

 "selection within the species." He might also have 

 escaped some of his apprehensions concerning the Fate 

 of adaptation, which he thought to be endangered by a 

 belief in saltation; for the fact is that adaptedness is only 

 another name for fitness, and this is a quality inherent 

 in the organism and precedent to selection— that is to say, 

 natural selection merely sifts out for preservation the 

 adapted or fit, allowing the unadapted or unfit to perish. 

 Now, it is impossible to see why forms both adapted and 

 unadapted to their environment may not arise through 

 mutation and thus be offered to the operation of selection. 

 In fact, Mr. Darwin has supplied us with a good illustra- 

 tion of such a case in a rather naive passage which has 

 run through every edition of "the Origin," to the fol- 

 lowing effect: 



One of the most remarkable features in our domesticated races is 

 that we see in them adaptation, not indeed to the animal's or plant's 

 own good, but to man's use or fancy. Some variations useful to him 

 have probably arisen suddenly, or by one step; many botanists, for 

 instance, believe that the fuller's teasel, with its hooks, which can not ho 

 rivaled by any mechanical contrivance, is only a variety of the wild 

 Dipsacus; and this amount of change may have suddenly arisen in a 

 seedling. 37 



Surely, if Mr. Darwin could have looked at this case 

 with a perfectly free mind, he must have perceived that 

 the teasel's adaptation to man's needs would not have 

 fallen if man had failed to exercise his power of selection ; 

 and that the adaptation was not weakened by the fact 

 that it arose by a mutation. But that he was uncon- 



