No. .529] 



OHGJXIC RESPONSE 



9 



slowly as the case may be, to environic factors, and 

 the inheritance of the somatic alterations constituting 

 such variations. The various corollaries of this theory 

 have the force of a certain obviousness, its assumptions 

 have been of ready service to the systematist and bio- 

 geographer, and its conclusions have long been tolerated 

 in the absence of decisive tests which are not to be easily 

 made or readily carried out. The time has now arrived, 

 however, when the claimants for Neo-Lamarckianism and 

 all of its conclusions must show cause for its further con- 

 sideration, or else allow it to drop from the position of 

 being seriously taken as a method of evolutionary advance. 



It is unanimously agreed that organisms, plants as well 

 as animals, change individually in aspect, in form and 

 structure of organs, in functionation and habit as they 

 encounter swamps, saline areas, gravelly uplands or 

 slopes, climatic differences identifiable with latitude or 

 elevation, and other physical and biological factors. It is 

 assumed that these somatic alterations are accommodative 

 and adaptive, making the organism more suitable for the 

 conditions which produce the changes. Such an assump- 

 tion is an over-reaching one. Any analysis of the changes 

 which an organism undergoes after transportation to a 

 new habitat will disclose one or a few alterations which 

 might be of advantage in dealing with the newly encoun- 

 tered conditions, but with these are many others, direct, 

 necessitous, atrophic, or hypertrophic as to organs which 

 have no relation whatever to usefulness or fitness. Fur- 

 ther, a critical examination fails to disclose any theoret- 

 ical considerations or any actual facts which would con- 

 nect inevitably the somatic response with the nature of 

 the excitation, outside of the specialized tropisms in 

 which specific reactions are displayed. Even in these 

 the adjustment is of such nature that a mechanism spe- 

 cially perceptive to contact, for example, may react to 

 changes in temperature, as illustrated by the action of 

 tendrils, and many similar cases might be cited. It is 

 evident that the soma of a plant or animal is not to be 



