286 NATURAL SCIENCE. April, 



right to think otherwise, if he pleases ; all that I wish to point out is that such 

 behaviour is in keeping neither with my experience of what is customary nor with 

 my notions of what is courteous. R. I. Pocock. 



British Museum (Natural History), S. Kensington. 



Mr. Romanes' Guinea-pigs. 



I should like to call your attention to a statement occurring in the review, in 

 the current number of Natural Science, of Romanes' "Darwin and After Darwin," 

 part II. The statement refers to Romanes' repetition of Brown-Sequard's experi- 

 ments, and stands thus : " He had not got nearly far enough to show positive or 

 negative evidence of any validity." Now with regard to the sixth class of Brown- 

 Sequard's experiments, Romanes obtained very distinct confirmation. He states 

 that in progeny of guinea-pigs in which dry gangrene of the ears had been produced 

 by injury to the restiform body, a similarly morbid state of the ears was frequently 

 observed, and that this morbid state was never observed in animals which had neither 

 been operated upon themselves nor were the progeny of parents which had been 

 operated upon. Further, the letter from Mr. Leonard Hill, quoted in the volume, 

 records the drooping of the left eyelid in two young guinea-pigs produced from 

 parents in which a similar droop was caused by division of the left cervical sympa- 

 thetic. Romanes himself says that he has not been able to furnish any approach to 

 a full corroboration of Brown-Sequard's results ; but that is very different from the 

 assertion that the results I have indicated are of no validity. I am inclined to 

 believe that no evidence, however strong, would convince some people of the inheri- 

 tance of an acquired character, although Weismann himself has had to modify his 

 theory so far as to include the possibility of such inheritance. But the duty of a 

 reviewer is to give a correct impression of the value of a book, and no ordinary 

 reader would imagine from your reviewer's language that Romanes had obtained 

 any definite positive results at all. Most people who read the evidence in question 

 would admit that the results I have mentioned add very distinctly to the strength of 

 the positive proof which has accumulated around Brown-Sequard's experiments, 

 while the most minute criticism and searching tests have failed to shake the validity 

 of positive results confirmed by several experimenters. — Yours faithfully, 



College of Surgeons, J. T. Cunningham. 



March 4, 1896. 



[After reading Mr. Cunningham's letter, and re-reading my review and the 

 sections of " Darwin and After Darwin " to which he refers, I agree with him that 

 my phrase concerning the validity of experiments was misleading. Every experi- 

 ment carefully conducted is valid. What I should have said was that the results of 

 the particular experiments referred to proved or disproved nothing. Romanes was 

 repeating Brown-Sequard's experiments, the interpretation of which as instances of 

 inheritance of acquired characters is, to say the least, debatable. To use Romanes' 

 own words, " on the whole " he was unable " to furnish any approach to a full 

 corroboration." The interpretation of the two or three cases in which he was able 

 to corroborate Brown-Sequard remain as doubtful as before. 



The Reviewer.] 



Embryology of Cirripedes. 



I should like to say a word or two with reference to the notice of my work 

 contained in your February number (p. 84). 



It was with some surprise that I read Professor Chun's paper, and noticed the 

 implied criticisms of my own observations on the characters of the appendages of 

 the Cirripedian Nauplii. The larv?e studied by Professor Chun all belong to the 

 latest Nauplius stage, while the Nauplii described in my first paper belong 

 exclusively to the first and second stages. In this communication I showed that the 

 appendages, while agreeing closely in the different species at the same stage, showed 

 differences when the two stages of each species were compared, and in a forth- 



