of discarded hypotheses.... The present refutation has been undertaken
in the interest of biological progress in this country. It is now high
time, so far as the so-called mutation hypothesis, based on the conduct
of the evening primrose in cultures, is concerned, that the younger
generation of biologists should take heed lest the primrose path of
dalliance lead them imperceptibly into the primrose path to the
everlasting bonfire."--Prof. Edw. C. Jeffrey (Harvard), in _Science_,
April 3, 1914.]

In conclusion it may be remarked that biologists do not claim to have
solved all the problems connected with heredity and variation. But the
general results taught us by Mendelism are now established beyond
controversy. Led by the German biologists, the leading scientists of the
world had already acknowledged that "pure" Darwinism or natural
selection cannot explain the origin of new organs or new forms. And now
Mendelism destroys the other supposed foundation for biological
evolution, by showing that small variations cannot be accumulated into
large differences equal in value to a unit character or a new species.
Thus the whole foundation of biological evolution has been completely
undermined by these new discoveries; and were it not for the wide-spread
credence the evolutionary theory has already received, and the
intellectual momentum it has acquired tending to carry it on by its
inertia into the future, it could be only a very short time now before
the elaborate treatises attempting to orientate with it all the facts of
religion and history would have to be consigned to the shelves labeled,
"Of Historic Interest." For as Bateson remarked in his recent address as
President before the British Association at Melbourne, Australia, the
new knowledge of heredity shows that whatever evolution there is occurs
by loss of factors and not by gain, and that in this way the progress of
science is "destroying much that till lately passed for gospel."[32]