In characterising as "least" weighty the old objection that the variations are too small at the start to be useful and to be selected, I find myself diametrically opposed to many writers of the present day, who have taken up with renewed vigor this old stumbling block to the principle of selection. Bateson[33] regards the deficient proof of the utility of initial stages as the most serious objection that can be made to natural selection. New organs must in the necessity of the case have first been imperfect; how, then, could they have been selected since imperfect organs cannot be useful? Answers from various quarters have already been {81} made to this and to similar objections, and Darwin himself has referred to the fact that even the smallest variations may have selective value; Dohrn, too, has urged his principle of change of functions, which with regard to this question of the utility of initial stages has certainly a wide significance. Still, every transformation and new structure in the narrow sense of the word does not rest on change of function, and neither Darwin nor Wallace, nor any other more recent champion of the principle of selection, can ever succeed in demonstrating in _every_ case the selective value of an initial stage. One reason why this cannot be done is because _in no case of morphological variation do we really know what these initial stages are_. To say that "new organs were at first necessarily imperfect" appears obvious enough, but it is at bottom a meaningless assertion, for it is not only possible but certain, that "imperfect" organs may still have selective value, and in by far the most cases have had selective value. The fact that we see to-day a long graduated line of forest-butterflies which possess resemblance to leaves and by this means are able in a measure to conceal themselves from prying eyes, yet that this resemblance in many species is very imperfect, in others more perfect, and in a very small number very perfect, simply proves that even "imperfect" formations may be of utility. The word "imperfect" in this connexion is itself very imperfect, for it is utterly anthropomorphic and estimates the biological value of a structure by our own peculiar artistic notions of its faithfulness to a leaf-copy, whilst we are really concerned here only with its protective value for the species in question, which is by no means dependent merely on the faithfulness of the copying, on the {82} faithfulness of the imitation, but on numerous other factors, such as the frequency and sharp-sightedness of the enemies of the species, the fertility of the species, their frequency and persecution in earlier developmental stages, and so forth, in brief, on their need of protection on the one hand and on their other means of protection on the other.