Notes and Comment 



valuable evidence bearing upon questions of heredity and other 

 matters of great theoretical importance has been obtained bv 

 means of laboratory investigations. But this work, fruitful 

 though it has been, has been, and is still, conducted with alto- 

 gether too limited an application of laboratory conceptions and 

 methods to the study of plants and animals in their own homes, 

 with their environmental relations undisturbed. Here and theie 

 an investigator has carried into the field the same exactness, the 

 same patience in the accumulation of data, and the same capac- 

 ity for generalization which has so long been cultivated in the 

 laboratory, and the results, when this has been done, have not 

 been less fruitful than those of the more restricted sphere within 

 which the laboratory student conducts his researches. Although 

 a later development, and consequently with less that at present 

 can formally be set down to its credit, it is a distinctivelv hope- 

 ful indication that at present so many institutions are com- 

 mitted to this broader view and that so many leading educators 

 and investigators are applying themselves to problems which 

 can never be wholly solved in the laboratory. 



Out of the mass of material now finding its wav into print 

 as part of the outcome of the numerous Darwin memorials of 

 tht past season, few utterances, perhaps, are more likely to 

 challenge attention than those expressive of the wide difference 

 of view regarding the problem of variation on the part of some 

 of the leading students of evolution. 



In a recent number of Sen na the following quotation from 

 the address of Prof. T. H. Morgan at Columbia University is 

 given: "Whether definite variations are by chance useful, or 

 whether they are purposeful, are the contrasting views of modern 

 speculation. The philosophical zoologist of today has made 

 his choice. He has chosen undirected variations as furnishing 

 the material for natural selection. It gives him a working 

 hypothesis that calls in no unknown agencies; it promises the 

 largest rewards." 



Referring at some length to this, Prof. H. F. Osborn says: 

 "It is interesting as showing the absolute divorce between the 

 zoological and paleontological observer. * * * If the 

 word "undirected" implies fortuity, as I presume it does, it is 



