1899] PROPER AND IMPROPER VIEW OF HEREDITY 03 
association of science and art is one of our dearest ideals. We are 
afraid, however, that our mineralogical colleagues might not like the 
make-up of this “journal of universal information,” for in the number 
before us the 5th heading is mineralogy and the 6th is science. It 
was an announcement under the last heading that arrested our hungry 
eye—“The Proper and Improper View of Heredity ”—for this went 
beyond our furthest ambitions. We had cherished an idea that, with 
the help of Galton and Weismann and their opponents, we might in 
the course of time arrive at a discrimination between the true and 
untrue view of heredity, but the criterion of propriety seemed unattain- 
able. We wondered before we opened the pages what revelation might 
await us—an exposure of Pearson’s prolegomena as prurient, of Weis- 
mann’s wisdom as wanton—and our fancies flew to Zola and Ibsen and 
other students of heredity, as we speculated whose views The New Age 
regarded as “improper.” The very title, we say, was a wonderment to 
us. We had never thought of looking at the facts in the light of 
propriety, and yet how luminous it is! But when we came to the 
article we found only a feeble protest against the old, absurd misunder- 
standing that to recognise one factor in life means a denial of the 
others. “Let us never fold our hands and say, because we have 
inherited a poor memory, a small order, poor calculation, or imperfect 
digestion and weak lungs, that we are fated by that inheritance and 
cannot overcome it.” Thereafter followed some verses on “ Heredity’s 
Opposites ”—e.g., “ Lowest sinner, highest saint, dull of wit and full 
of plant” (the italics are ours), ending with the appropriate words 
“curses deep.” 
Darwin’s Doggedness. 
In the charming address which the veteran botanist, Sir Joseph D. 
Hooker, delivered on June 14, when Mr. Hope Pinker’s statue of 
Darwin, presented by Prof. Poulton, was unveiled at the University 
Museum at Oxford, there are many little touches which vivify the 
picture which modern naturalists have of their master. The proof- 
sheets of the eagle journal impressed Hooker profoundly, even 
despairingly, “ with the genius of the writer, the variety of his acquire- 
ments, the keenness of his powers of observation, and the lucidity of 
his descriptions.” In 1844 Hooker was shown confidentially a sketch 
of “The Origin of Species,” and on his many visits to town he was 
habitually “pumped” after breakfast with botanical questions, the 
answers to which were deposited in bags or pockets that hung against 
the wall. “If I were asked,” he said, “what traits in Mr. Darwin’s 
character appeared to me most remarkable during the many exercises 
of his intellect that I was privileged to bear witness to, they would be, 
first, his self-control and indomitable perseverance under bodily suffering, 
