HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE. 127 



By A Dampf, Ph.D. (A German Admirer.) 



The Editor of the KntoiiKiliH/ist's lU'conl, the present number of which 

 is devoted to the imperishable memory of the great savant and man, 

 J. W. Tutt, has paid me the compliment of inviting me to contribute 

 a few words of appreciation, from the Continental point of view. [ 

 gladly avail myself of the opportunity of discharging a debt of gratitude 

 to an investigator, from whose works I have gained so much stimulus 

 and instruction. 



So true and profound a tribute has been paid to his memory by the 

 friends and colleagues who worked with him, and were in constant 

 touch with him, and the scientific results at which he aimed, the part 

 he played in his own branch of study, and the influence which he 

 exercised over others, all have been treated so thoroughly, and from 

 such varied points of view by other pens, that there remains nothing 

 original for me to add. 



I never had the good fortune to make the personal acquaintance of 

 the author of the Natural Hisfort/ of the British Ijepidoptera, and never 

 corresponded with him, so it is only through his work and publications 

 that I can form a picture of his individuality, but what I can express, 

 is the feeling of a Continental Lepidopterist, who has followed with 

 attention and interest the development of his Science in England, who 

 has much to thank English workers for, and who shares to-day the deep 

 grief of Erglisbmen. 



It is a mournful duty to express one's thanks to the dead, and the 

 sadder when inexorable fate has severed the thread of life at the height 

 of its activity, when so much valuable work must remain unachieved ; 

 but there still remains so much that is imperishable and permanent, 

 that our gratitude cannot be too warmly expressed. We must all thank 

 the departed, and above all, the land in which he lived, and whose 

 Lepidoptera-Fauna he made the first object of his research. But as 

 nothing is isolated, either in the material or spiritual world, but all 

 things are connected and linked together, so the significance of Tutt's 

 work is not confined to his native country, but extends far beyond the 

 frontiers of his homeland. 



For he most clearly grasped the problem of Variation ; he understood 

 the importance, in the investigation of the Laws of Nature, of the 

 registration of those divergences which appear as the result of the 

 conflict between the inherited trend of development of the organism 

 and the disturbing effect of exterior influences, which are written for 

 us most clearly upon the wing of a butterfly or moth. A thousand 

 questions arise here according to the nature of the influence: does it 

 proceed directly or indirectly ? Have the innumerable climatic factors 

 various effects upon the organism ? Do we find, too, variations of 

 biological peculiarities ? And what value have they, and what 

 correlation with morphological chararacters ? These, and many other 

 questions, by Tutt's special study of variation, were brought into the 

 foreground, and their solution attempted. When we can follow a 

 species throughout its area of distribution, when we can trace out the 

 steps by Avhich the pattern of the species has been modified by the 

 various local influences of its environment, when we recognise how far 

 the plasticity of a form goes, then for the first time shall we have 

 completed the foundation of the work that Tutt began, and to the 



