368 NATURAL SCIENCE. Mav. 



mentions tliem. (P, 196.) It begins with the words " Another kind 

 of variation is illustrated , . . . " By reading to the bottom of the 

 same page it may be seen how I " made capital out of them." 



(14.) " Another mistake " of mine (as Mr. Bather calls it) is like 

 my "main fallacy " ! Not only did I not refuse to admit more than 

 one kind of variation, I actually insisted on the necessity of recog- 

 nising at least two kinds. (P. 196.) I am fully aware that each 

 " kind " includes many varieties. 



(14.) The remainder of this paragraph is unintelligible to me. 

 " The very same ' change in the constitution of successive generations of a 

 species leading to the production of a new species' does take place in the 

 life-history of a single generation." And again : — " All these well-known 

 instances of variation (and I use the term precisely in Mr. Hurst's 

 own sense) ' occur in a way utterly unlike the way in which it does 

 actually occur,' i.e., within Mr. Hurst's horizon." What can this 

 mean ? 



(15.) By making mj'self acquainted with certain brilliant re- 

 searches "inspired by the Recapitulation Theory" to which Mr. 

 Bather directs my attention, I have no doubt whatever that I may 

 learn much. That the brilliant researches should have been inspired 

 by that theory will certainly not make me reconsider my condemnation. 

 The whole science of chemistry has arisen out of brilliant researches 

 inspired by the theory of the transmutability of the baser metals 

 into gold. Shall we therefore accept that theory ? Mr. Bather is 

 hopelessly at fault in his assumption that my attack on the theory is 

 due to my ignorance of the many brilliant discoveries which have 

 been made under its inspiration. 



The " amended " statement of the method of variation given on 

 p. 277 errs in the precise way in which Mr. Bather says that my 

 paper did. It refuses to admit more than one kind of variation I 

 Moreover, it speaks of events being '^pushed back'' in time by other 

 events which have not yet happened. This is, no doubt, figurative, 

 but whether any such erroneous conception exists in Mr. Bather's 

 mind or not, the acceptance of the statement in that form by recapitu- 

 lationists would certainly produce in the minds of the ^'profanwn 

 vulgus " an impression that this was a case in which the effect is pro- 

 duced before the cause has arisen. 



To prevent any further misrepresentation as to what I have 

 denied and what I have not denied, I will conclude with a summary 

 statement of my position : — 



/ do not deny that a rough parallelism exists in some cases between ontogeny 

 and phytogeny. I do deny that the phytogeny can so control the ontogeny as 

 to make the latter into a record of the former — even into an imperfect record 

 of it. 



I assert that those very characters of the adult which vary most 

 in the adult are precisely the same as those which vary most in the 

 late stages of development also. 



