224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



velop the medusa form is hindered by the early unf oldment of the supe- 

 rior tendency to sexual develojiment, which exhausts the vital energies 

 and absorbs or prevents the formation of other tissue adapted to the 

 lower life-purposes. The needs of this highest life-power tyrannize 

 over all lower powers, and as soon as it appears all other development 

 ceases. In most animals it is the final step, after all lower stages 

 are completed. Here it is occasionally the initial step, and exhausts 

 the developmental powers before any of the lower stages have ap- 

 peared. 



In plants the same principle holds good. Active nutrition checks 

 development, and unfoklment ceases at the leaf or the root stage. For 

 full development, nutrition must be checked ; when a partial resting- 

 stage succeeds, higher transformation sets in, and the sexual bud or 

 the flower individual appears. In many cases hints of the leaf stage 

 of development are displayed. In others this stage is completely 

 aborted. Thus the leaf-bearing individual, in its lack of power to 

 reproduce itself, and in its structural and functional differences from 

 the flower individual, is closely analogous to the case of neuter insects 

 as compared Math the sexual forms. In plants, also, we have instances 

 of the aborted development of the sexual forms, closely analogous to 

 those seen in the Ilydrozoa. Thus, in these remarkable phenomena 

 of development there seems to be a close relation between the tenants 

 of the two great kingdoms of life. 



MASSON'S INTEErEETATION OF CARLYLE.* 



THERE is nothing sadder or more painful in the history of litera- 

 ture than that eclipse of the reputation of Thomas Carlyle which 

 resulted from the publication after his death of various books, bio- 

 graphic and autobiographic, which came as a new revelation of the 

 inner life and pcreonality of the great author. Professor Masson, of 

 the University of Edinburgh, was one of his old and intimate friends, 

 and one of his most ardent admirers. It was but natural, therefore, 

 that when the great reaction came, so injurious to Carlyle's reputation, 

 his friend should find himself called upon to say something in vindica- 

 tion of that apparently much-damaged reputation. Professor Masson's 

 two lectures, delivered before the Philosophical Institution of Edin- 

 burgh in February of the present year, give an extremely interesting 

 view of Carlyle's character, opinions, and labors, and certainly go far 

 to vindicate him from much of the reproach that fell upon his name 

 through the publications that quickly followed his death. "We have 



* " Carlyle Personally and in bis Writings." Two Edinburgh lectures by David Masson. 

 Macmillan & Co. 



