The factorial mutant answers neither the endurance test nor the
intersterility test of a genuine species. It would, doubtless, be
going too far to regard all such mutant forms as examples of germinal
degeneracy, but it cannot be denied that all of them, when compared
to the wild type, are in the direction of unfitness, none of them
being viable and prosperous under the severe conditions obtaining in
the wild state. Bateson, who seems to regard all mutant characters as
recessive and due to germinal loss, declares: “Even in Drosophila,
where hundreds of genetically distinct factors have been identified,
very few new dominants, that is to say positive additions, have been
seen, and I am assured that none of them are of a class which could be
expected to be viable under natural conditions. I understand even that
none are certainly viable in the homozygous state.” (Toronto Address,
_Science_, Jan. 20, 1922, p. 59.) “Garden or greenhouse products,”
says D. S. Jordan, “are immensely interesting and instructive, but
they throw little light on the origin of species. To call them species
is like calling dress-parade cadets ‘soldiers.’ I have heard this
definition of a soldier, ‘one that has stood.’ It is easy to trick out
a group of boys to look like soldiers, but you can not define them as
such until they have ‘stood.’” (_Science_, Oct. 20, 1922.) In a word,
factorial mutants, owing, as they do, their survival exclusively to
the protection of artificial conditions, could never become the hardy
pioneers of new species.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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