380 Darwinism, Biometry and Some Recent Biologif. I. 
The above Table has been prepared from Hanel's means, because these are 
what Jennings had before him. Many of these means are, I have found, erroneous 
to a greater or less extent. Further, in a number of cases Hanel did not preserve 
as parents individuals with the highest and lowest number of tentacles occurring 
in the "pure line." But what do we perceive even in the data thus presented ? That 
although the character is very slightly inherited and largely the product of other 
factors than heredity, yet if we reproduce from the individuals in each pure line 
with (a) the lowest and (b) the highest number of tentacles available, the produce of 
the latter class has in 22 out of the 26 "pure lines" more tentacles than the produce 
of the former class. 
In other words, so far from Hanel's observations demonstrating as that author 
and Jennings suppose that : 
(1) "In einer Popidation von Hydra ist die Selektion wirksam, innerhalb der 
reinen Linien ist sie ganz ohne Einfluss. 
(2) Im Falle 1 ist die Regression eine teilweise, im 2 Falle ist sie voUstandig," 
they actually show that regression exists within the " pure line," and that as far 
as Hydra is concerned the idly termed "fluctuating variations" have a real selective 
value. The " erfreuliche Uebereinstimmung mit Johannsen's schonen Resultaten," 
which Hanel says the experiments indicate, is real, but far different in its bearing 
from what that author imagines. The Phaseolus experiments of 1903 and the 
Hydra experiments of 1908 both alike indicate that the offspring are closer to the 
immediate parent than to other members of the same " pure line." Yet they 
have both alike been accepted without criticism by distinguished biologists who, 
suffering from " neo-chytophilia," seem peculiarly anxious to remove the only 
philosophical basis of Darwinism as a memorial of its fiftieth anniversary. 
(7) Let us recognise fully what the " pure line " theory leads to in the case 
of any self-reproducing organism. It assumes that the cells of an individual 
destined for the production of new organisms are all alike in character and that 
variety in the somatic characters of such new organisms, when resulting from 
a single individual, is not due to any differentiation in the groups of the cells 
from which the fraternal individuals arise. Every self-reproducing species must 
have originated with an indefinite number of pure lines — differentiation could not 
have been produced by selection — or else, differentiation must have been produced 
at some epoch by what has been termed a fit of mutation. Either solution, the 
initial indefinite differentiation of a species, or the epochs of mutation, appears to 
me to destroy Darwinism as a consistent logical system. What then ? Simply, 
that if Darwinism be proved to be in error it must be dropped. But the proofs 
which are being accepted to-day, that it is in error, are no proofs at all. They 
are hurried conclusions drawn from observations, which, when treated by any 
adequate logic, demonstrate — even on ill-suited material — the very reverse of what 
