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
It may here be remarked that, in his essay on the _Influence of
Isolation_, Professor Weismann fails to distinguish between the two
kinds of isolation. This essay deals only with one of the many different
forms of isolation--the geographical--and is therefore throughout
concerned with a consideration of diversity as arising from apogamy
alone. But in dealing with this side of the matter Weismann anticipated
both Gulick and myself in pointing out the law of inverse proportion,
which I have stated in the preceding paragraph in what appears to me its
strictly accurate form.
3. Segregate Breeding, or homogamy, which arises under any of the many
forms of discriminate isolation, must always tend to be _cumulative_.
For, again to quote Mr. Gulick, who has constituted this fact the most
prominent as it is the most original feature of his essay, "In the first
place, every new form of Segregation[11] that now appears depends on, and
is superimposed upon, forms of Segregation that have been previously
induced; for when Negative Segregation arises [i. e. isolation due to
mutual sterility], and the varieties of a species become less and less
fertile with one another, the complete infertility that has existed
between them and some other species does not disappear, nor does the
Positive Segregation cease [i. e. any other form of isolation previously
existing].... In the second place, whenever Segregation is directly
produced by some quality of the organism, variations that possess the
endowment in a superior degree will have a larger share in producing the
segregated forms of the next generation, and accordingly the segregative
endowment of the next generation will be greater than that of the
present generation; and so with each successive generation the
segregation will become increasingly complete." And to this it may be
added, in the third place, that where the segregation (isolation) is due
to the external conditions of life under which the organism is placed,
or where it is due to natural selection simultaneously operating in
divergent lines of evolution, the same remarks apply. Hence it follows
that discriminate isolation is, in all its forms, cumulative.
[11] This term may here be taken as equivalent to Isolation.
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