Mr. Romanes on the Origin of Species

Abstract

WHAT the Times said is substantially the same as what Mr. Romanes himself says on p. 366 of his paper: “The theory of natural selection is not, properly speaking, a theory of the origin of species: it is a theory of the development of adaptive structures. Only if species always differed from one another in respect of adaptive structures, would natural selection be a theory of the origin of species. But, as we have already seen, species do not always, or even generally, thus differ from one another.” Very well then, I say, if this be true, it shrivels up the part played by natural selection to very small dimensions.