Physiological Specific Characters

Abstract

PROF. R. MELDOLA, in his very suggestive presidential address to the Entomological Society, remarks (Trans. Ent. Soc. for 1896, Pt. v. p. lxxviii.):—“At any rate, it appears to me inconceivable that any change of environment requiring a modification of structure of sufficient magnitude to rank as diagnostic in the systematic sense, should not also be accompanied by a greater or less amount of physiological readjustment.” But in a foot-note on the very same page, in which he discusses the present writer's statement that specific characters are essentially physiological, he says:—“There must be so much in common in the physiological processes of allied species, that well-marked physiological differences cannot, without further evidence, be regarded as the universal characteristic of specific differences.” These two statements are surely somewhat contradictory, and as the proposition I made appears to me to be a fundamental one, I desire to offer some explanatory remarks, especially as few critics will probably trouble themselves to look at the original paper.