Frequency of Different Types of Beech Leaves

No. of Veins10111213141516171819202122
Frequency173411031847959551630718136151

Thus the mode for beech trees in general is sixteen; but, as shown in the other table, this mode does not correspond with either of the two individual modes here ascertained. The illustration shows that the racial mode may differ from the individual mode. There are also cases known in which the mode of a group of individuals living in one locality is different from that of another group living in another locality. This difference may be a constant one from year to year, although so slight, that unless actual measurements are made, the difference cannot be detected, because of the overlapping of the individuals from different localities. If evolution took place by slow changes of this sort, it might be possible to detect its action, even when very slow, by means of measurements made on a large number of individuals. At least this has been suggested by those who believe new species may result from changes of this sort.

There is some evidence showing that by selecting particular individuals of a series, and breeding from them, the mode may be changed in the direction of selection. Thus it has been stated by Davenport that the descendants of twelve- and thirteen-rayed daisies give a polygon with a skewness of +1.92; while the descendants of twenty-one-rayed plants give a polygon with a skewness of -.13.

Pearson has described very concisely the possibilities involved in the selective action of the environment. He states that if we examine the frequency distribution of a set of organisms that have just become mature, and later make a similar examination on the same number of individuals (but not the same individuals) during the period of reproduction, we shall probably find that a change has taken place which may have been due to selection of some sort. The same thing might be found in the next generation, and, if it did, this would indicate that “selection does not necessarily mean a permanent or a progressive change.” The selection in this imaginary case would be purely periodic and suffice only to maintain a given race under given conditions. “Each new adolescent generation is not the product of the entire preceding generation, but only of selected individuals. This is certainly the case for civilized man, in which case twenty-six per cent of the married population produce fifty per cent of the next generation.”

Pearson believes that “if a race has been long under the same environment it is probable that only periodic selection is at work, maintaining its stability. Change the environment and a secular change takes place, the deviations from the mode previously destroyed giving the requisite material.” “Clearly periods of rapidly changing environment, of great climatological and geological change, are likely to be associated with most marked secular selection. To show that there is little or no change year by year in the types of rabbit and wild poppy in our English fields, or of daphnia in our English ponds, is to put forward no great argument for the inefficiency of natural selection. Take the rabbit to Australia, the wild poppy to the Cape, the daphnia into the laboratory, and change their temperature, their food supply, and the chemical constituents of water and air, and then the existence of no secular selection would indeed be a valid argument against the Darwinian theory of evolution.” In regard to the last point, it should be noted that, even if under the changed conditions a change in the mode took place, as Pearson assumes, it does not follow necessarily that selection has had anything to do with it, but the environment may have directly changed the forms. Furthermore, and this is the essential point, even if selection does act to the extent of changing the mode, we should not be justified in concluding that this sort of change could go on increasing as long as the selection lasts. All that might happen would be to keep the species up to the highest point to which fluctuating variation can be held. This need not lead to the formation of new species, or direct the course of evolution.

Pearson points out further that, even if we suppose that a secular change is produced in a new environment, we cannot explain how species may break up into two or more races that are relatively infertile. Suppose two groups of individuals, subjected to different environments, become isolated geographically. Two local races will be produced. “Isolation may account for the origin of local races, but never for the origin of species unless it is accompanied by a differential fertility.” In other words, Pearson thinks that, unless the reproductive organs are correlated with other organs, in such a way that as these organs change the interracial fertility of the germ-cells is altered, so that in the two changed groups the individuals are no longer interfertile, new species cannot be accounted for, since their mutual infertility is one of their most characteristic features. “Without a barrier to intercrossing during differentiation the origin of species seems inexplicable.”

We need not discuss the various suggestions that have been made to explain this difficulty, none of which, as Pearson points out, have been satisfactory. He himself believes that a process of segregation of like individuals must occur, during the incipient stages at least, in the formation of species. Afterwards a correlation may exist between the new organs and the germ-cells, of such a sort that a relative or an absolute sterility between the incipient species is attained. After this condition has been reached the two new species may freely intermix without a return to the primitive type, since they are no longer fertile inter se. It seems to me, also, that this would be an essential requisite if we assume that species are slowly formed out of races from individual differences, as Pearson supposes to be the case. There are, however, other possibilities that Pearson does not take into account, namely, that from the very beginning the change may be so great that the new form is not fertile with the original one; and there is also another possibility as well, that, although the new and the old forms are fertile, the hybrids may be like one or the other parent, as in several cases to be given later. Not that I mean to say that in either of these two ways can we really offer a solution of the question of infertility, for, from the evidence that we possess, it appears improbable that the infertility of species inter se has been the outcome of either of these causes.

In support of his main thesis Pearson gives certain data in respect to preferential mating in the human race. By this is meant that selection of certain types of individuals is more likely to take place, and also that the fertility of certain types of individuals is greater than that of other types. The calculations are based on stature, color of hair, and of eyes. The results appear to show in all cases examined that there is a slight tendency to form new races as the result of the more frequent selection of certain kinds of individuals. But even if this is the case, what more do the results show than that local races may be formed,—races having a certain mode for height, for color of eyes or of hair? That changes of this kind can be brought about we knew already without any elaborate measurements, yet we should not conclude from this that new species will be formed by a continuation of the process.

Pearson writes: “As to the problem of evolution itself we are learning to see it under a new light. Natural selection, combined with sexual selection [by which Pearson means segregation of certain types through individual selection] and heredity, is actually at work changing types. We have quantitative evidence of its effects in many directions.” Yes! but no evidence that selection of this sort can do anything more than keep up the type to the upper limit attained in each generation by fluctuating variations. Pearson adds, “Variations do not occur accidentally, or in isolated instances; autogamic and assortive mating are realities, and the problem of the near future is not whether Darwinism is a reality, but what is quantitively the rate at which it is working and has worked.” This statement expresses no more than Pearson’s conviction that the process of evolution has taken place by means of selection. He ignores other possibilities, which if established may put the whole question in a very different light.