Natural Science fr^- 



iuj|UIRARY 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 



August 1899 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Against the Tide. 



A crank has been defined as a man whose position is so different 

 from our own that we utterly fail to understand it. But this definition 

 is too charitable ; it ignores the public aspect of the crank, who not 

 only occupies an unintelligible position, but bores you by insisting upon 

 it. The crank is essentially a house-top man, not oue in a corner. 

 Yet we would not call any one a crank, for by the definition this would 

 proclaim our own lack of understanding. We would only say that 

 there are some whom some would call cranks, and we have just received 

 a paper from one, — a paper entitled " Faussete" de l'idee evolutionniste 

 appliquee au systeme planetaire ou aux especes organiques " (Lyon, 

 1899, 7 pp). The author, Mr. F. Leport, has previously tried to con- 

 vince geologists that there are no faults around Morvan, to convince 

 astronomers that the nebular hypothesis is gratuitous, and to convince 

 others about other things, and now he tries to convince us of the false- 

 ness of the evolution-idea. What he has convinced us of is, of course, that 

 he does not understand it at all. He opposes it to the idea of creation, 

 which no sensible man ever does, for to do so is to quarrel about 

 puuctuation. He finds that the law of existence is undulatory move- 

 ment, and that the origin of the movement is divine — a platitudinarian 

 belief which affects the evolutionist not one whit. He tells us about 

 the homogeneity of protoplasm and the infertility of hybrids (surely we 

 might have been spared that), and so with other matters, when he gets 

 near facts he shows by mishandling them that he does not realise their 

 solemnity. He tells us that a thesis of St. George Mivart's entitled 

 " Evolutionisme restreint aux corps organiques " was examined at Borne 

 by competent authority and judged " insoutenable " so far as it dealt 

 with the body of man, and his lament is that the verdict was so limited 

 in its disapprobation — " signe terrible des temps troubles 011 nous 

 vivons." We would borrow from the Soman authority the word " in- 

 soutenable," and fix it to Mr. Leport's mistaken attempt to talk wisely 

 about matters which he shows no evidence of understanding. 



6 NAT. SC. VOL. XV. NO. 90. 8 I 



