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
The only difference between Mr. Gulick's essays and my own is, that, on
the one hand, he has analyzed much more fully than I have the various
forms of isolation; while, on the other hand, I have considered much
more fully than he has the particular form of physiological isolation
which so frequently obtains between allied _species_. This particular
form of physiological isolation I have called "physiological selection,"
and claim for it so large a share in the differentiation of specific
types as to find in it a satisfactory explanation of the contrast
between natural species and artificial varieties in respect of
cross-infertility.
* * * * *
Mr. Wallace, in his _Darwinism_, has done good service by enabling all
other naturalists clearly to perceive how natural selection alone
produces monotypic evolution--namely, through the free intercrossing of
all individuals which have not been eliminated by the isolating process
of natural selection itself. For he very lucidly shows how the law of
averages must always ensure that in respect of any given specific
character, half the individuals living at the same time and place will
present the character above, and half below its mean in the population
as a whole. Consequently, if it should ever be of advantage to a
species that this character should undergo either increase or decrease
of its average size, form, colour, &c., there will always be, in each
succeeding generation, a sufficient number of individuals--i. e. half of
the whole--which present variations in the required direction, and which
will therefore furnish natural selection with abundant material for its
action, without the need of any other form of isolation. It is to be
regretted, however, that while thus so clearly presenting the fact that
free intercrossing is the very means whereby natural selection is
enabled to effect monotypic evolution, he fails to perceive that such
intercrossing must always and necessarily render it impossible for
natural selection to effect polytypic evolution. A little thought might
have shown him that the very proof which he gives of the necessity of
intercrossing where the _transmutation_ of species is concerned,
furnishes, measure for measure, as good a proof of the necessity of its
absence where the _multiplication_ of species is concerned. In justice
to him, however, it may be added, that this distinction between
evolution as monotypic and polytypic (with the important consequence
just mentioned) still continues to be ignored also by other well-known
evolutionists of the "ultra-Darwinian" school. Professor Meldola, for
example, has more recently said that in his opinion the "difficulty from
intercrossing" has been in large part--if not altogether--removed by Mr.
Wallace's proof that natural selection alone is capable of effecting
[monotypic] evolution; while he regards the distinction between
monotypic and polytypic evolution as mere "verbiage[48]."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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