Curious thing, nature. It means a lot of different things to different people. Goddess, universal force, myth. A journal

> Nature is a British multidisciplinary scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869. It was ranked the world's most cited scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports, is ascribed an impact factor of approximately 38.1, and is widely regarded as one of the few remaining academic journals that publishes original research across a wide range of scientific fields. Nature claims an online readership of about 3 million unique readers per month.

Going back into the archives to FEBRUARY 16, 1899 in the journal NATURE:

Is Natural Selection all Metaphor? 

THE Duke of Argyll, in his reply to Mr. Herbert Spencer, says "in the Darwinian theory there is no selector." Though we have not yet discovered a principle or factor which plays the part of the breeder in nature, it by no means follows that "natural selection" is "all metaphor," nor yet, as has been often stated, an altogether misleading phrase. The role of the breeder or artificial selector is, I believe, often misunderstood. If we consider what the art of breeding mainly consists in, we may come to the conclusion that even the phrase "artificial selection" is, to a considerable extent, misleading and metaphorical. It seems to me the art of breeding consists mainly in two things, viz. (1) producing prepotency, and (2) preventing intercrossing . Prepotency is produced and maintained by inbreeding. The object of preventing intercrossing is to arrest, as far as possible, variation and reversion. If it can be shown that in nature prepotency often arises either as a sport or through inbreeding, and that prepotency by arresting the "swamping effects of intercrossing" plays the part of the fences of the breeder and the cages of the fancier, we shall be justified in looking upon prepotency as a "selector," and in finding more than metaphor in the phrase "natural selection." We already know that amongst insects a sport may displace the parent form; and if, instead of searching for evidence of intersterility as suggested by Romanes, we search diligently for evidence of prepotency, we may ere long discover the "selector" -- the factor that in nature, under the control of utility, plays the part of the breeder . J. C. EWART . 


Which leads to this discussion of "prepotency" in the June 1921 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL:

Prepotency

It was an early observation of animal breeders that some animals possess a superior power of impressing their offspring with their characteristics. This peculiar power is termed prepotency. The existence of prepotency in animals cannot be denied although by just what means their prepotency is expressed has not yet been determined. Bees are no exception, since we have instances of great fertility in certain queenbees which have become unusual value as breeders.

from THE PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING APPLIED TO BEES By Geo. A. Coleman

If you are still reading you may be thinking "WTF is prepotency?" and how do I get it?

Darwin's Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication contains the phrase "It is therefore not surprising that every one hitherto has been baffled in drawing up general rules on the subject of prepotency." (Darwin, 1868, p. 71). 

to be continued

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