ADAPTATION IN ANIMAL REACTIONS 1 



PROFESSOR G. II . PARKEB 

 Harvard University 



In recent times no feature of animal or plant life has 

 been accorded greater emphasis than adaptation, and 

 this property has been repeatedly declared to be one of 

 the fundamental characteristics, if not the most funda- 

 mental, of living bodies. Nevertheless, the field of or- 

 ganic adaptation has been scarcely more than superfi- 

 cially surveyed. With the naive instinct of the collector, 

 the biologist has been content to roam over this vast 

 territory and gather here and there what seemed to him 

 to be striking examples of adaptation till our te\t> are 

 rich storehouses of instances of nature's apparent in- 

 genuity. How well founded even the more striking of 

 these examples are, no one really knows, though the ef 

 feet of the whole collection on the naturalist is to en- 

 gender in him a feeling akin to awe for the adaptive 

 capacity of living beings. May it not be, however, that 

 we overestimate this aspect of organic nature and em- 

 phasize beyond reason its real value as a factor in the 

 organic world? It is mv opinion, at least, that many ani- 

 mal reactions which we have been accustomed to call 

 adaptations should not be thus designated, and that the 

 difficulties that we often meet in attempting to account 

 for such reactions are due to our consideration of them 

 from the standpoint of adaptations when in reality they 

 are far from being such. 



Adaptations are indissolubly connected with the ac- 

 tivities of animals and plants. We are only just begin- 



tive, working system, that the moment we think of it as 



