Evolution without mutation

✍ Scribed by Davenport, C. B.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1905
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 323 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-104X
• DOI: 10.1002/jez.1400020105

✦ Synopsis

Professor de Vries having found in nature races that seem to have arisen suddenly, fully formed, and having repeatedly observed mutating individuals that breed true, declares, in his " Mutationstheorie," for the universality of mutation as the method of phylogenetic differentiation. He says (1901, p. 139):

a gradual origin of elementary species is not yet known but very many cases are known in which species have suddenly made their appearance. " Nach der Mutationstheorie sind die Arten nicht durch allmahlige, wahrend Jahrhunderte oder Jahrtausende fortgesetzte Selection entstanden sondern stufenweise, durch plotzliche, wenn auch ganz kleine Umwandlungen."

The mutation theory as a sufficient theory of evolution has many supporters. Bateson has long urged a theory of this sort as a result of his studies, particularly on the data collected in his "Materials for the Study of Variation," 1894. I n his recent book