We must briefly refer here to the views--much discussed in the last decade--of H. de Vries, who believes that the roots of transformation must be sought for in _saltatory variations arising from internal causes_, and distinguishes such _mutations_, as he has called them, from ordinary individual variations, in that they breed true, that is, with strict in-breeding they are handed on pure to the next generation. I have elsewhere endeavoured to point out the weaknesses of this theory,[33] and I am the less inclined to return to it here that it now appears[34] that the far-reaching conclusions drawn by de Vries from his observations on the Evening Primrose, _Oenothera lamarckiana_, rest upon a very insecure foundation. The plant from which de Vries saw numerous "species"--his "mutations"--arise was not, as he assumed, a _wild species_ that had been introduced to Europe from America, but was probably a hybrid form which was first discovered in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and which does not appear to exist anywhere in America as a wild species. This gives a severe shock to the "Mutation theory," for the other _actually wild_ species with which de Vries experimented showed no "mutations" but yielded only negative results. Thus we come to the conclusion that Darwin[35] was right in regarding transformations as taking place by minute steps, which, if useful, are augmented in the course of innumerable generations, because their possessors more frequently survive in the struggle for existence. (_b_) _Selection-value of the initial steps_ Is it possible that the insignificant deviations which we know as "individual variations" can form the beginning of a process of selection? Can they decide which is to perish and which to survive? To use a phrase of Romanes, can they have _selection-value_?