No. 544] ORIGIN OF UNIT CHARACTERS 



195 



of Bateson's 323 Cases 



i fi 



! if 

 I I s 



ficiently described. 



The fact that the vast majority of germinal anomalies 

 examined in the above review of Darwin and of Bateson 

 have no significance in evolution in a state of nature, 

 throws all germinal anomalies under suspicion as natural 

 processes, important as they may be in artificial breed- 

 ing and hybridizing. Yet some of these anomalies m 

 mammals are less profoundly discontinuous than those 

 which De Vries has cited in plants under the designation 

 of ' ' mutations. ' ' The most important of these De Vries ' 

 mutations may now be considered. 



3. Evidence for De Vries' 's Mutation Theory 



In 1901 the biological world was aroused as it had not 

 been since 1859 by the publication of De Vries 's hypoth- 

 esis. 12 Here was a new and apparently sure foundation 

 for discontinuity in the supposed sudden appearance of 

 elementary species or " mutants" arising with the acqui- 

 sition of entirely new characters, new forms of plants or 

 animals quite free from their ancestors and not linked to 

 them by intermediates. The influence and vitality of this 

 great work is shown in a citation from Darbishire (1911, 

 op. cit., p. 5) : 



The view that species have originated by mutation is based on Prof, 

 de Tries' observations on the Evening Primrose ((Enothera Lamarck- 

 iana) (Fig. 1). Working with this form, he was able to witness, for 

 the first time, the actual process of the origin of new species. 

 "De Vries, Hugo, -Die Mutationstheorie," Leipzig, 1901, p. 24. 



