Specific Stability and Mutation

Abstract

THAT mutations inevitably appear sooner or later under cultural conditions, is not an assumption, but a fact. That they do so only casually under natural conditions, and usually fail to perpetuate themselves, equally seems to me not an assumption, but a fact. If, as Mr. Lock seems to argue, there is an equal chance of their occurrence in either case, then their appearance should be more frequent in nature than in cultivation, because the former has a larger population to work with. But it is not so. I therefore conclude with Darwin that cultivation introduces some provocative condition which is lacking (or latent) in nature. What that condition is seems to me a very important subject for research.