sought for in SALTATORY VARIATIONS ARISING FROM INTERNAL CAUSES, and
distinguishes such MUTATIONS, as he has called them, from ordinary
individual variations, in that they breed true, that is, with strict
inbreeding they are handed on pure to the next generation. I have
elsewhere endeavoured to point out the weaknesses of this theory ("Vortrage
uber Descendenztheorie", Jena, 1904, II. 269. English Translation London,
1904, II. page 317.), and I am the less inclined to return to it here that
it now appears (See Poulton, "Essays on Evolution", Oxford, 1908, pages
xix-xxii.) that the far-reaching conclusions drawn by de Vries from his
observations on the Evening Primrose, Oenothera lamarckiana, rest upon a
very insecure foundation. The plant from which de Vries saw numerous
"species"--his "mutations"--arise was not, as he assumed, a WILD SPECIES
that had been introduced to Europe from America, but was probably a hybrid
form which was first discovered in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and
which does not appear to exist anywhere in America as a wild species.

This gives a severe shock to the "Mutation theory," for the other ACTUALLY
WILD species with which de Vries experimented showed no "mutations" but
yielded only negative results.

Thus we come to the conclusion that Darwin ("Origin of Species" (6th
edition), pages 176 et seq.) was right in regarding transformations as
taking place by minute steps, which, if useful, are augmented in the course
of innumerable generations, because their possessors more frequently
survive in the struggle for existence.

(b) SELECTION-VALUE OF THE INITIAL STEPS.

Is it possible that the significant deviations which we know as "individual
variations" can form the beginning of a process of selection? Can they