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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



functionally-produced modifications, which, of course, 

 ultimately consist in the action of certain purely 

 mechanical environing agencies on the organism. 

 And it must be remembered that this conception 

 of organic 'evolution is not the idea of any school 

 of ultra-Darwinians, but the opinion of nearly all 

 the prominent men of science of the day. I 

 allude to men like Professor Huxley, Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer, and Dr. Romanes. Every organism then 

 being what it is in virtue of its varied and changing 

 environment, it would be manifestly absurd to set up 

 an arbitrary standard of perfection. Yet this is what 

 Miss Layard did in her earlier articles. "That 

 standard," she said, in effect, "is man." 



Thus it will be seen that while Miss Layard 

 attributes to me the use of the phrase " typical 

 standard," etc., in a sense that requires an assumption 

 which, as I have endeavoured to show, an evolutionist 

 (in the usually understood sense) could not have 

 made, she herself makes this very assumption in her 

 earlier articles. 



Again, in Miss Layard's most recent contribution, 

 she makes some assumptions for which I can find no 

 warrant in the correspondence on the subject. For 

 instance, she says : "An evolution of retrogression is 

 cheerfully accepted as the gradual means by which 

 man has arrived at his present physical condition, 

 and on this poor. . . instrument, his brain, which 

 apparently alone has progressed, is to act, with this 

 astonishing result, that he is ' the most perfect 

 animal known.' " Now, who ever asserted or im- 

 plied that "the brain alone has progressed"? 

 Again, I fail to see "the inconsistency of a brain 

 that has progressed being prepared to work an 

 organism that has retrograded," taking retrogression, 

 as I imagine all evolutionists must, to mean that 

 certain altered conditions have necessitated a corre- 

 sponding modification of function, and this again has 

 reacted on the body, and produced certain modifica- 

 tions of structure, the process being in some cases 

 combined with the action of natural selection. 



Again, the analogy with "Mozart attempting to 

 play on a worn-out lodging-house piano," appears to 

 me to be singularly unhappy ; and for this reason — 

 a mechanical instrument which the contrivers know 

 can perform certain things, and must absolutely be 

 worn out sooner or later, cannot possibly be com- 

 pared with an organism, which has infinite powers of 

 adapting itself to changed conditions. 



Further, with regard to the quotation from Dr. 

 Foster, which is summed up in the italicised words : 

 " Its (the will's) operations are limited by the 

 machinery at its command." Nobody asserted that 

 the machinery at the command of the will was not 

 adequate to perform the things man does perform. 

 All that any of your correspondents contend, is that 

 certain parts of this machinery are in a lower state of 

 development than the corresponding parts of some of 

 the lower animals. 



Lastly, with regard to the two striking instances 

 which I mentioned in Science-Gossip for June in 

 support of this fact, I would point out that while I 

 spoke of the muscles themselves of an ordinary 

 civilised human being of the present day, Mr. 

 Darwin speaks of the " correlated action of the 

 muscles of the hand, arm, and shoulder" of a 

 Fuegian, which is a somewhat different thing. My 

 other instance Miss Layard has not attempted to 

 answer. 



In conclusion, I would repeat that organs, per se, 

 can only be considered more or less perfect in 

 proportion as they are more or less able to perform 

 the functions for which they were developed ; and that, 

 therefore, no organism can be said to be " ideal " 

 unless every one of its organs performs its functions 

 more completely than any corresponding ones through- 

 out organic nature. As no organism, from the 

 changing nature of the environing conditions can 

 possibly conform to this standard, to call man or any 

 other organism "the ideal form," is entirely in- 

 consistent with the fundamental principles of organic 

 evolution. 



A. G. Tansley. 



LATHYRUS TUBEROSUS IN SUSSEX. 



A MOST interesting floral "find" in Sussex 

 during the present summer has been that of 

 the pease earth-nut {Lathyrus tuberosus), by R. D. 

 Postans, Esq., who observed it on the shingle beach 

 at Eastbourne in full bloom in the first week in 

 August. He then sent me a specimen with its 

 lovely crimson flowers, but with only a portion of 

 its creeping rootstock. Afterwards, however, using 

 a trowel, the rootlets, with its remarkable tubers, 

 were also found. These were forwarded on the 

 1 6th, and are here represented of the natural 

 size; one of them weighed a quarter of an ounce. 

 As this curious species, so far as I know, has 

 only occurred previously at Fyfield, near Chipping 

 Ongar, in Essex, Gibson's account of it may be 

 quoted :—" This beautiful plant was first noticed 

 here by Octavius C order in 1859, and distinguished 

 in the following year. It grows about Fyfield, ex- 

 tending over a district three miles in extent. A 

 plant so conspicuous might naturally be supposed to 

 be a recent introduction, but a resident farmer has 

 noticed it growing abundantly in the same fields for 

 the last sixty years." He also observes: "The 

 Rev. W. W. Newbould finds specimens of L. tuberosus 

 in the British Museum, in the collections of Buddie 

 and Petiver, Buddie stating : • I had it from the 

 Rev. Mr. John Sedgwick, who gathered it not far 

 from Lincoln in the north field of Blankney, near the 

 road to Lincoln.' " The locality in which the Sussex 

 plant occurs, i.e. the shingle beach at Eastbourne, 

 differs greatly from that mentioned by Gibson, viz. 



