No. 52.5] SHORTER ARTICLES AXD DISCUSSION 



563 



ture are the same as in the home valley. It finds a grove of the 

 same kind of trees as that from which it came, and from its young 

 arises a permanent colony. At the end of a few scores of years, 

 what do we find f It has blossomed out in a new group of varia- 

 tions not found in the original stock, and some of the original 

 characters have disappeared. Here is what seems to be "a 

 spontaneous process of change" ; and we are about to call it a 

 genuine case of evolution, when Dr. Cook reminds us that, if 

 this change could not have taken place without isolation, it is 

 not spontaneous, and that it is really a case of the impeding of 

 evolution. 



In the course of time another branch colony is formed, which 

 varies from the original stock in habits of feeding and seek- 

 ing of shelter from the sun. It gradually, but spontaneously, 



and so subjects itself to a new form of selection. The change is 

 greater than in the former case, and is undoubtedly due to 

 spontaneous variation, with survival of the fittest under new 

 conditions chosen for itself spontaneously; for the kind of 

 trees, on which the original stock lived, are found in abundance 

 all around. Shall we call the process a case of evolution, or 

 simply the checking of evolution throutrh isolation and selec- 

 tion? I am inclined to define evolution so as to include the 

 processes of cha litre in such cases as these. 



In this same article we find statements <rivin.tr still greater 

 limitation to what the author considers the real process of evo- 

 lution. In the last paragraph it is called, "The processes of 

 spontaneous, progressive change in species." On the third page 

 also, we read: "Divergence may be greater than evolution when 

 changes are not progressive, but sideways, or backwards." If 

 the change in a species must be shown to be entirely spontaneous, 

 and also not sideways or backwards, but upward, before we can 

 venture to speak of it as an example of evolution, this word, 

 now so popular, will find itself badly ostracized. "Speciation" 



hit ion. I am, however, willing that the fate of the two should 

 be left to the struggle for existence, and the success of the fittest, 

 which I regard as one of the controlling factors in the evolution 

 of lantruage. The statement I am unwilling to accept is that 

 isolation and the survival of the fittest i that is species-forma- 



