1897. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 153 



species, at least as successive mutations of a species. This separa- 

 tion of mutations is akin to the detailed systematic work of the 

 modern zoologist, who finds himself able to recognise geographical 

 races and physiological varieties. But we must beware of reversing 

 the process. One antelope is not to be separated from another 

 merely because it lives in another part of the country ; nor are two 

 bees to bear different names only because they have a fancy for 

 different flowers. Similarly one ammonite must not be labelled with 

 a new name merely because it was found two inches or even two 

 yards above one previously known. We know perfectly well that 

 some forms of life can be subjected to varying conditions, or can live 

 through many ages without becoming modified in structure. More- 

 over, to regard a parallel of latitude, or a particular stratum, as in 

 itself a diagnostic character of a species, would be to upset the 

 methods of stratigraphical geology, and the conclusions based on a 

 study of geographical distribution. It would be an obvious logical 

 fallacy, akin to putting the cart before the horse. 



We have been induced to put these well-worn truths very clearly, 

 because we have recently stumbled on two instances of the opposite, 

 or shall we say the topsy-turvy, method. One instance was the 

 peculiar remark of Dr. Wheelton Hind, criticised by our reviewer on 

 p. 386 of vol. ix. To this author, however, we have no wish to allude 

 further. It is more serious when we find a solid worker and acute 

 writer like Mr. G. Dollfus, patronising the same heresy. In the 

 Revue Critique de Paleozoologie, i, p. 40, when discussing the " Mono- 

 graph of the Foraminifera of the Crag" by T. Rupert Jones and others, 

 he writes: "Si la Paleontologie conserve sous un meme nom specifique 

 des formes de tous les etages et de tous les pays, elle perd toute sa 

 valeur .... elle cree pour les foraminiferes une survie extraordinaire, 

 toute speciale, qui est une surprise et une anomalie dans le regne 

 animal." Now Mr. Dollfus may believe that the Crag species of 

 Foraminifera do differ in form or structure from their ancestors and 

 descendants. But Messrs. Jones, Burrows, Sherborn, Millett, Holland, 

 and Chapman believe they do not ; while on the one hand they hold 

 that local and temporary dwarfing is readily produced by lowering of 

 temperature or diminution of food-supply, on the other hand, they 

 believe that the Foraminifera are a group the majority of whose 

 representatives have been subject to precisely similar conditions from 

 very early times; they beheve that they have an enormous range, and 

 in that fact they see nothing extraordinary. Holding these views, are 

 they really to give new names to their specimens merely because they 

 come from the Crag and not from the London Clay ? If Mr. Dollfus 

 does not mean this, he has not expressed himself with the lucidity of 

 his nation. If he does mean it, we can only suppose that he is a 

 "special creation" man, a pre-Darwinian, and anti-Lamarckian, who 

 has come out of the eighteenth century on the Time-machine of 

 Mr. H. G. Wells, and doesn't know how to reverse its action. 



