XI, C, 4 
Copeland: Natural Selection 
155 
“Species do not, so far as we can tell, appear in any sort of advantageous 
response to local conditions, which are the only conditions that matter when 
they first appear. Having appeared, a species will, or will not, spread, 
according to its suitability to local conditions. In each locality the ultimate 
commonness of a species will depend upon its degree of adaptation to the 
local conditions, and to a large extent, on chance.” And from the paper 
on the Dilleniaceae, “Dillenia ovata was perhaps the first, or the best 
adapted, for it has spread comparatively widely.” 
Regarding myself as a confirmed adherent of the doctrine of 
natural selection, I do not hold it in the slightest measure directly 
responsable for the origin of any species. Species originate by 
variation. There is not the slightest doubt that in very nearly 
all cases — if not in quite all cases, the exceptions have never 
been well demostrated — variation is indiscriminate in direction. 
Now, if any man chooses to define a mutation as a variation 
that gives rise to a new specific character, then, certainly, species 
originate by mutation exclusively. My own objection to this use 
of words is that they are newer than the ideas they would express, 
are therefore superfluous, and consequently are a nuisance. 
There is nothing new in holding that the mutations are in- 
dependent of natural selection, since the variations have always 
been held to be so. Doctor Willis maintains that the species 
originate by mutations which occur independently of fitness. 
The older idea is that the species, or characteristics, originate 
by variation, independently of natural selection. Neither the 
validity nor the scope of the doctrine of natural selection seems 
to be seriously impaired by the substitution of the novel word. 
When any man distinguishes a mutation from a variation by a 
usable definition, it will become possible to see whether the change 
of words is justified and to test its effects. The author of muta- 
tions (de Vries) presented no such definition, unless it be the one 
already suggested, that a mutation is a variation which produces 
a specific character; as to the latter, de Vries took us back to 
the starting point, from which we might wander around the 
circle ad libitum , by identifying specific characters by their origin 
through mutation. If any subsequent writer has identified muta- 
tions more intelligibly, it has escaped me ; Doctor Willis, at least, 
will hardly attempt this, in view of his clear recognition of 
the inherent hopelessness of attempting to draw any line between 
small differences and bigger ones, between the measure of inci- 
sion of a leaf-margin and the characters that are used to dis- 
tinguish species, genera, and even families. 
While the choice of diction as between mutation and variation 
has properly nothing to do with the recognition of natural selec- 
