Il6 NATURAL SCIENCE. August. 



I am not sure I understand what the writer means by struc- 

 tural adjustments for rendeving adjustments possible, but I suppose the 

 structural adjustments of the human eye will be admitted as examples 

 of "adjustments concerning whose action and efficacy there is no dis- 

 pute " ; and the writer is quite right in his assertion that " Brooks 

 . . . supposes that these structural adjustments have to be explained," 

 if they can. He might have added that I do not suppose the assertion 

 "that they are merely the fundamental properties of protoplasm," 

 will be generally regarded as an important contribution to the ex- 

 planation. 



As I understand him, the writer believes the attributes of all 

 living things are to be deduced from the properties of living matter ; 

 an opinion which I am quite prepared to accept as soon as it is 

 proved ; for I most assuredly do not believe anything inconsistent 

 with this creed, except that " the assertion which outstrips evidence 

 is not only a blunder but a crime." 



If it is ever proved that the attributes of all the living things 

 which exist and of all those which have existed in the past are dedu- 

 cible from the properties of living matter, I do not see how we can 

 stop here, or refuse to admit that innumerable forms, filling up all 

 the gaps between all the known species, are also deducible from the 

 same properties. We must also admit that this living matter con- 

 tains the promise and potency of all the monstrosities which have 

 been reared by the breeder or the horticulturist, and of innumerable 

 abortions, the Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath 

 their shoulders, as well as hosts of possible organisms which have, so 

 far, laid dormant in the womb of time, and of which most may never 

 see the light. 



The first question concerning the origin of species we have to ask 

 is, why this potency has resulted in a system of nature which is com- 

 parable to a tree, with diverging branches, and empty spaces, widen- 

 ing as time goes on, between them — instead of a spherical shell of 

 individuals growing outwards in all directions from a common centre. 



According to Darwin this is the outcome of a process of exter- 

 mination, which must lead to this result whether there is or is not an 

 agency which draws out definite combinations from that wonderful 

 Pandora's box, the potency of living matter. 



A species consists of a number of similar, but not identical, 

 individuals, grouped about a mean according to the statistical " law 

 of error," and the characteristics of each individual are what the 

 students of statistics call an " event." 



According to Darwin the influences which determine each 

 " event " have nothing to do with the character of the type, as this is 

 fixed by the standard of extermination. To the question whether 

 specific types are inherent in living matter or external and objective 

 to it, he answers that they are both ; that they are inherent insomuch 

 as all their data, or " events," are properties of the physical basis of 



