ORGANIC EVOLUTION AND THE SIGNIFICANC E 

 OF SOME NEW EVIDENCE BEARING 

 ON THE PEOBLEM 



PROFESSOR L. B. WALTON 

 Kenyon College 



The biological problem recognized as having the great- 

 est fundamental importance at the present period is that 

 problem of evolution relating to the means by which tin- 

 heritable characters differentiating various organisms 

 from one another were first called into existence, or 

 granting the validity of the gene hypothesis and speaking 

 more concisely, how hereditary character-forming genes 

 have originated in the process of evolution. That the 

 diverse forms of life found upon the earth are only to 

 be explained as the result of organic evolution, is a prop- 

 osition which scarcely needs be mentioned at the present 

 period in the history of science, at least so far as indi- 

 viduals endowed with minds reasonably logical in evalu- 

 ating evidence are concerned. It is not evolution as a 

 process going on in the world which is being particularly 

 questioned nor the general method by which characters 

 once having originated are inherited, but the particular 

 method by which heritable characters first arose. 



The purpose of the essay here presented is threefold. 

 First, that of pointing out the unsatisfactory nature of 

 much' of the earlier evidence as a basis for sound general- 

 izations in connection with a clear understanding of evo- 

 lution. Second, that of calling attention to the serious 

 shortcomings of modern methodology in throwing light 

 on the causative factors of evolution. Third, that of pre- 

 senting some new evidence somewhat unique in its na- 

 ture, based in part on preliminary experimental work, to 

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