Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 3 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Isolation and Physiological SelectionRomanes, George John
Science
Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 3 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Isolation and Physiological Selection
Romanes, George John
Evolution (Biology); Heredity
other parts of the general area, increase till they supplant these
original forms. Then, in some limited portion of the general area,
there arise two still more divergent forms, with greater mutual
infertility, and with increased adaptation to the environment,
enabling them to prevail throughout the whole area. The process
here described, if it takes place, is not modification by natural
selection.
On the other hand, it _is_ modification by physiological selection. For,
among the several other forms of isolation which are called
into requisition, the physiological (i.e. ever accumulating
cross-infertility) is supposed to play an important part. That the
modification is not modification by natural selection may perhaps be
rendered more apparent by observing, that in as far as _any_ other mode
of isolation is involved or supposed, so far is the _possible_ agency of
natural selection eliminated _as between the two or more otherwise
isolated sections of a species_; and yet it is modes of isolation other
than that furnished by natural selection (i.e. perishing of the less
fit), that Mr. Wallace here supposes to have been concerned--including,
as I have before shown, the physiological form, to which, indeed, he
really assigns most importance of all. Or, as Mr. Gulick states the
matter in his independent criticism:--
In the supposed case pictured by Mr. Wallace, the principle by
which the two segregating forms are kept from crossing, and so are
eventually preserved as permanently distinct forms, is no other
than that which Mr. Romanes and myself have discussed under the
terms Physiological Selection and Segregate Fecundity. Not only is
Mr. Wallace's exposition of the divergence and the continuance of
the same in accord with these principles which he has elsewhere
rejected, but his whole exposition is at variance with his own
principle, which, in the previous chapter, he vigorously maintains
in opposition to my statement that many varieties and species of
Sandwich Island land molluscs have arisen, while exposed to the
same environment, in the isolated groves of the successive valleys
of the same mountain range. If he adhered to his own theory, "the
greater infertility between the two forms in one portion of the
area" would be attributed to a difference between the _environment_
presented in that portion and that presented in the other portions;
and the difficulty would be to consistently show how this greater
infertility could continue unabated when the varieties thus
characterized spread beyond the environment on which the character
depends. But, without power to continue, the process which he
describes would not take place. Therefore, in order to solve the
problem of the _origin_ and _increase_ of infertility between
species, he tacitly gives up his own theory, and adopts not only
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