1899] "SYMPHILY" 353 



this Wasmann finds an argument against the theory of natural selection 

 which has fostered a custom or instinct of a disadvantageous sort. 

 But this argument surely implies an altogether fallacious assumption, 

 that this is the best of all possible worlds. No one can believe that 

 natural selection has worked out an ideally perfect modus vivencli for 

 any organism ; what is worked out is a practicable compromise between 

 the organism and the order of nature. A strong parental instinct has 

 been evolved in ants ; it is not perfect any more than any other 

 parental instinct ; it has the defects of its qualities ; and the guests are 

 really, as Escherich and Janet maintain, parasites on a virtue, illustra- 

 tions, in short, of the familiar biological fact that there is no rose without 

 its thorn. 



The Jermyn Street Museum. 



The Government has decided not to remove the Museum of Practical 

 Geology from Jermyn Street to South Kensington. There has been a 

 good deal of feeling over the matter. For our part we think it would 

 have been well to place the fossils at Jermyn Street alongside of those 

 at the British Museum. It would have many advantages. To 

 attempt to name fossils now, under the same conditions that prevailed 

 half a century ago, is disheartening to any worker, and it seemed 

 desirable that the Geological Survey should pay a little more attention 

 to economic geology, for which purpose the Museum of Practical 

 Geology was undoubtedly founded. 



Science and Literary Style. 



We have received from Mr. Buckman a protest against the con- 

 demnation of his Homeric adjectives implied in our criticism last 

 month of his article on Cycling. We admit that the question of the 

 exact number of adjectives which the English noun may be induced to 

 bear, is one which may be justly submitted to arbitration, but we still 

 retain our original opinion that the specimens we quoted were instances 

 of excess. It seems to us also too much that one poor substantive of 

 five letters should be compelled to stagger under the weight of two 

 such adjectives as " draggle-tail " and " limb-hampering," however 

 justifiable these might have been in an earlier and more heroic age. 

 Mr. Buckman — if we do not misunderstand him — is of opinion that 

 the accumulation of adjectives, preferably of the compound type, 

 conduces to intelligibility, and that this intelligibility has a price far 

 above the rubies of literary style. We must admit that this opinion 

 seems to be justified by much scientific writing of the present day. 



