ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 99 



Rilej's contributions to the history and structure of the Phylloxera, of the scale 

 insects, of the hop-plant louse, the Pemphigin:e, Psyllidse, etc., are of permanent interest 

 and value. His beat anatomical and morphological work is displayed in his study on the 

 mode of pupation of butterflies, the research being a diflicult one, and especially related 

 to the origin of the cremaster, and of the vestigial structures, sexual and others, of the 

 end of the pupa. Whatever he did in entomology was original. He may occasionally 

 have received and adopted hints and suggestions from his assistants, but he laid out the 

 plan of work, sujiervised every detail, followed up the subject from one year to another, 

 and made the whole his own. His originality in a quite diflferent direction from biology 

 is seen in his paper entitled " Perfectionnement du Graphophone," read before the French 

 Academy of Sciences at Paris, in 1889. He was also much interested in Aeronautics, 

 and took much delight in attending seances of spiritualists and exposing their frauds, in 

 one case, at least, where another biologist of world-wide fame, then visiting in Washington, 

 was completely deluded. 



Riley was from the first a pronounced evolutionist. His philosophic breadth and his 

 thoughtful nature and grasp of the higher truths of biology is well brought out in his 

 address on " The Causes of Variation in Organic Forms," as Vice-President, before the 

 biological section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1888. 

 He was a moderate Darwinian, and leaned, like other American naturalists, rather to 

 Neo-Lamarckism. He says : " 1 have always had a feeling, and it grows on me with 

 increasing experience, that the weak features of Darwinism and, hence, of natural selec- 

 tion, are his insistence (1) on the necessity of slight modification; (2) on the length of 

 time required for the accumulation of modifications, and (3) on the absolute utility of the 

 modified structure." Riley, from his extended experience as a biologist, was led to ascribe 

 much influence to the agency of external conditions, remarking, in his address : " Indeed, 

 no one can well study organic life, especially in its lower manifestations, without being 

 impressed with the great power of the environment." He thus contrasts Darwinism and 

 Lamarckism : *' Darwinism assumes essential ignorance of the causes of variation and is 

 based on the inherent tendency thereto in the ofispring. Lamarckism, on the contrary, 

 recognizes in use and disuse, desire and the physical environment, immediate causes of 

 variation afiecting the individual and transmitted to the ofl'spring, in which it may be 

 intensified again both by inheritance and further individual modification." 



The following extracts will illustrate his clear and vigorous style of thought and 

 expression and his attitude on the relations between science and religious philosophy. 

 Regarding the question of design, he says : " Both Lyell and Gray believe in the form of 

 variation having been planned or designed. It seems to me that the evidences of design 

 in nature are so overwhelming that its advocates have an immense advantage over those 

 who would discard it. A fortuitous cosmos is, to most persons, utterly inconceivable, yet 

 there is no other alternative than a designed cosmos. To accomplish anything by a pro- 

 cess, or by an instrument, argues greater, not less power, than to do it directly, and even 

 if we knew to-day all the causes of variation, and understood more thoroughly than we do 

 the method of evolution, we should only carry the sequence of causes a step further back 

 and get no nearer to the Infinite or Original Cause." 



" Evolution teaches that nothing is yet so perfect but it may be improved ; that 

 good comes of the struggle with evil and the one can never be dissociated from the other. 

 The erect position which has given man his pre-eminence has brought him manifold 

 bodily ills. No evolutional sibyl looks to a millennium. Higher development must ever 

 mean struggle. Evolution shows that man is governed by the same laws as other 

 animals." " Evolution reveals a past which disarms doubt and leaves the future open 

 with promise —unceasing purpose — progress from lower to higher. It promises higher 

 and higher intellectual and ethical attainment, both for the individual and the race. It 

 shows the power of God in what is universal, not in the specific, in the laws of nature, 

 not in departure from them." 



"The experience gained by those who have reached the highest ethical and intellectual 

 growth must be formulated in precept and principle to be of any benefit to society at 

 large, and the higher ethical sentiment and religious belief — faith, love, hope, charity — 

 are priceless beyond all that exact science can give it." 



