iS95. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 159 



ot his research to a special committee. When he has passed the 

 Tripos, or been awarded a " Certificate of Research," and has kept 

 six terms, he may proceed to the degree of B.A., and thereafter, like 

 those who have become bachelors on the old regulations, he may- 

 proceed in due course to the higher degrees. 



Anti- Darwinism. 



Hope is beginning to flutter her wings again in the breasts of 

 those who fear evolution. In the Edinburgh Review for July a thought- 

 ful essayist makes notices of Bateson's " Variation " and Beddard's 

 " Animal Colouration " the occasion of a crafty diatribe against 

 Darwinism. He takes Bateson's arguments against continuous 

 variation, and Beddard's exposure of the fantastic extremes to which 

 some have pushed the doctrines of sexual selection, mimicry, and so 

 forth, as evidence that at last the Darwinian stronghold is being 

 taken, not by assault from without, but by defection of its scientific 

 garrison. Now, it certainly is the case that many able naturalists at 

 the present time are criticising the theories grouped round Natural 

 Selection with great vigour. There is no likelihood that Darwinism 

 will pass into an unassailable dogma, or that scientific men will have 

 to subscribe to thirty-nine articles — even with the latitudinarian 

 subscription acceptable in the Enghsh Church. But, apparently, it 

 is necessary to repeat what Darwin and his illustrious disciples have 

 stated, in season and out of season. Natural Selection, sexual 

 selection, and all the various theories of the mechanism of evolution 

 may turn out true or untrue. You may find among fifty competent 

 naturalists fifty different views as to the extent of their operation. 

 But evolution is true, and it was through Darwin's illuminating 

 principle that evolution first became accepted as probable, and since 

 has been accepted as inevitable by the great majority of those 

 competent to judge. There may be what the Edinburgh Reviewer 

 considers a revolt against Darwinism ; but among famous naturalists 

 of to-day you shall not find six (of whom we do not doubt the 

 Edinburgh Reviewer to be one) who do not believe that the evolution 

 of animals and plants has been placed beyond doubt, and that 

 Darwin's work was the moving cause in the formation of this belief. 



Mr. Grant Allen's Views. 



In the Fortnightly Review for July, 1895, ^'^'^- Grant Allen has an 

 amazing contribution to Biology. He calls it a " flank movement 

 against Weismann." Characteristically enough, he begins by a mis- 

 statement of Weismann's relation to the problems of heredity. He 

 writes : " Before he (Weismann) intervened, we were all of us asking, 

 ' How is transmission of acquired characters possible ? ' Weismann 

 broke in with the prior question, ' Is transmission of acquired charac- 



