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Marchant, James

"Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2"

At the end of my paper I show a correlation which is probably
general and sufficient.
In criticising Romanes, however, at the British Association, I want to
call your special attention to a point I have hardly made clear enough
in my paper. Romanes always speaks of the "physiological variety" as if
it were like any other _simple_ variety, and could as easily (he says
more easily) be increased. Whereas it is really complex, requiring a
remarkable correlation between different sets of individuals which he
never recognises. To illustrate what I mean, let me suppose a case. Let
there occur in a species three individual physiological varieties--A, B
and C--each being infertile with the bulk of the species, but quite
fertile with some small part of it. Let A, for example, be fertile with
X, Y and Z. Now I maintain it to be in the highest degree improbable
that B, a quite distinct individual, with distinct parents originating
in a distinct locality, and perhaps with a very different constitution,
merely because it also is sterile with the bulk of the species, should
be fertile with the very same individuals, X, Y, Z, that A is fertile
with. It seems to me to be at least 100 to 1 that it will be fertile
with some other quite distinct set of individuals. And so with C, and
any other similar variety. I express this by saying that each has its
"sexual complements," and that the complements of the one are almost
sure not to be the complements of the other.


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