Abstract
WITH all due deference to your able correspondents Dr. St. George Mivart and Prof. G. J. Romanes, I cannot for the life of me understand how the theory of natural selection can be seriously assailed by investigations into the formation of galls by insects. Gall-formation has always appeared to me to be a pathological, that is a perverted physiological process, and to be due to the action of some animal irritant upon normal vegetable tissues during their period of active growth. These formations are therefore, to my mind, fair'y on a par with the globular nests produced by the larvæ of the Œstrus, or bot-fly, in the hides of oxen; or to the inflammatory foci in the tissues of the kidneys, due to the translation of Bacilli, in the case of ulcerative endocarditis. Other examples bearing on the subject will doubtless occur to your readers. In all such instances we have certain changes in the cellular or protoplasmic tissue-elements of the host, brought about by the growth and development of a foreigner in their midst; and natural selection, in so far as it operates in such cases, seems to have sided mostly with the stranger, and to be to his advantage alone. That the host under these circumstances performs actions “which, if not self-sacrificing,” are at least “disinterested,” must be admitted; but it is the self-sacrifice of coercion and disinterestedness under compulsion.
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HOLLIS, W. Galls. Nature 41, 131 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/041131c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/041131c0
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