The second naturalist who has approached the fundamental idea of my doctrine of germinal selection, is a more recent writer. I refer to the English botanist Thiselton-Dyer, a scientist whose occasional utterances on the general questions of biology have more than once evoked my sympathetic approval. In an article, "Variation and Specific Stability," which appeared in {79} _Nature_ for March 14, 1895, this author enunciates twenty theses touching this subject, many of which appear to me apposite and correct, particularly the following: In every species there is a mean specific form round which the variations are symmetrically grouped like shots around the bull's eye of a target. As soon as natural selection comes into play and favors one of these variations it must shift the centre of density. Variations arise by a change in the outward conditions of life and can be useful or indifferent; only in the first case will natural selection obtain control of them and "the new variation will get the upper hand and the centre of density will be shifted." This is not germinal selection, but it is the same as what I have referred to in this and in the preceding essay as displacement of the zero-point of variation. Thiselton-Dyer did not draw the conclusion that a definitely directed variation answering to utility resulted from this process, which variation alone must cause the disappearance of useless parts, for the reason that he never attempted to penetrate to the causes of the shifting of the zero-point of variation. Neither Fritz Mueller, whose utterances Thiselton-Dyer was obviously ignorant of, nor Thiselton-Dyer himself pushed his inquiries beyond the thought that the shifting in question resulted entirely in consequence of personal selection. There is no gainsaying that the degeneration of useless organs cannot be explained by personal selection alone, seeing that though the minus variations may possibly have a selective value at the beginning of a degenerative process, they certainly cannot have such in the subsequent course of the same, when the organ has dwindled down to a really minimal mass of substance as compared with the whole {80} body. Of what advantage would it be to the whale if his hinder leg, now concealed in a mass of flesh and no longer protruding beyond the skin, should still be reduced one or several centimetres in size? (Spencer.) If the minus variations have no selective value, how can the upper limit of the variational field be constantly displaced downwards, as actually happens? It is unquestionable but something different from personal selection must come here co-determinatively into play. * * * * * V. HISTORICAL REMARKS CONCERNING THE ULTIMATE VITAL UNITS. (For this Appendix which is marked "Appendix V." in the German edition of _Germinal Selection_ see the footnote at page 40.) * * * * * VI. THE INITIAL STAGES OF USEFUL MODIFICATIONS.