It is only by watching the effect of the peculiarity on the offspring of its possessor that we are able to determine the nature of the variation. Where the peculiarity is due to a fluctuating variation the offspring will display the peculiarity in a diminished degree; but if the peculiarity be due to a mutation, the offspring are likely to display it in as marked a degree as the parent.
Fritz Müller and Galton conducted independently enquiries into the amount of the regression shown by the progeny of parents which have deviated from the average by fluctuating variation.
Müller experimented with Indian corn; Galton with the sweet pea.
Each found that where the deviation of the parents is represented by the figure 5, that of their offspring is usually 2, that is to say, the deviation they display is, on the average, less than half that of their parents.
Applying this rule to the hypothetical case given above, if two individuals of species A having a length of wing of 20 inches be bred together, their offspring will, on an average, have a length of wing of 20 inches, since neither parents showed any deviation from the mean. On the other hand, the offspring of 20-inch-wing individuals of species B would show, on an average, a length of wing of only about 18¼ inches. They tend to return to that mode from which their parents had departed.
But suppose that the deviation of the parents in this case had been due, not to fluctuating variation, but to a mutation; this would mean that, owing to some internal change in the egg that produced each parent, 20 inches became the normal length of wing; that the normal length of wing had suddenly shifted from 17 inches to 20 inches.
The result of this would be that their offspring would have on an average a wing-length of 20 inches instead of 18¼ inches, that the centre of variation as regards length of wing had suddenly shifted from 17 to 20, that, in future, all fluctuating variations would occur on either side of 20 inches, instead of on either side of 17 inches as heretofore.
Thus a variation is a fluctuating one or a mutation according as it does or does not obey Galton’s Law of Regression.
De Vries’s Dictum
De Vries says that it is of the essence of mutations that they are completely inherited. This statement, although substantially true, fails to take into consideration the factor of fluctuating variation. For example, in the above instance if the two individuals of species B had mutated into forms with a 20-inch wing, their offspring will nevertheless vary inter se, some of them will have wings shorter than 20 inches and others wings more than 20 inches in length. But the average wing-length of the offspring of the two mutating individuals will be 20 inches.