Heredity and Variation

Abstract

THE interesting suggestion made by Prof. Adam Sedgwick in his Dover address—to the effect that variability has decreased and heredity increased, so to speak, as evolution has progressed—leads me to call attention to the work of certain other writers. Prof. Bailey, of Cornell University, in his work “The Survival of the Unlike” (Macmillan) argues in detail for a similar view, i.e. that heredity has been gradually “acquired,” while variability has been reduced. His book deals largely with evidence from plants. He stated the view earlier in certain papers. Moreover Prof. Williams, of Yale University, independently took up a like position at about the same time in several papers, the latest one having been read and discussed before the Society of American Naturalists at Ithaca, N.Y., December 1897, and subsequently printed in Science.¹ The point of view has become fairly familiar to American biologists. Indeed the editor of Science has referred to it as one of the two most important recent suggestions in the theory of evolution. As Prof. Sedgwick does not refer to these writers—though he may intend to do so in the fuller discussion which he promises—his readers to whom the suggestion appeals may find it worth while to look into them. The work of Prof. Bailey—who is a natural selectionist among botanists !—is remarkable from other points of view as well.