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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. LIII 



sons for attempting to remove biology from its place 

 among the natural sciences. 



Now it is a curious circumstance that recent develop- 

 ments of the evolution theory have carried us continually 

 farther from an explanation of adaptation. Natural se- 

 lection, in the Darwinian sense, has been relegated to a 

 secondary position, while the Lamarckian principle is 

 denied in foto by many. On the other hand, all that the 

 niutationist can tell us in regard to the matter is that 

 such useful characters as spring full-fledged into exist- 

 ence are not likely to be eliminated. Thereupon, the vi- 

 talist takes fresh hope and asserts the inadequacy of 

 what he calls ''mechanistic" biology to account for pro- 

 gressive evolution. 



Of course, one way to solve a problem is to deny that 

 the problem exists. And this is what is being done by 

 various persons who are interested in minimizing the 

 difference between the living and the non-living. Thus 

 one physiological botanist, Livingston,^ tells us that any- 

 thing organic or inorganic is adapted to do just those 

 things which in reality it is found to do. And he seems 

 to think it quite as reasonable to speak of the adaptation 

 of fragments of pumice to float on water, as of the adap- 

 tation of a flower to insure the visits of insects. The 

 "concept of purposeful adaptation," which still plays 

 such an extensive role in biology, is due to the fact that 

 "ours is a developmentally young science," retaining 

 "features of its early youth." Sooner or later this con- 

 cept will be "totally abandoned, even as the same 

 concept has already been abandoned by the other natural 

 sciences." 



Now it ma>- well ho that a more mature state of science 

 will enable us to disponsr with such naive expressions as 

 imply that an otuaii has a function to perform in the 



