157 



in June, the last of them were developed into perfect and sexually 

 mature animals."* 



Since the publication of the above remarkable circumstance a 

 case has also been recorded in which the tadpoles of the Lissotriton 

 punctattis (a species of water-newt) were observed to deposit several 

 eggs without previously acquiring the adult characters.t 



But I must hasten on to speak of another point which ought to 

 be attended to by those who search after new facts in science, and 

 that is the importance of not neglecting to note down any of 

 which we are sure, because at the moment they seem of little 

 worth. It may be considered by some a trifling occupation to be 

 continually scraping together a number of details which it is 

 thought can never be turned to account in any way, but it should be 

 remembered when we have once got hold of anything new in science 

 — be it only true as well as new— we cannot tell what may come of it. 



When Wollaston, in 1802, viewing the solar spectrum through a 

 narrow chink in a window shutter with a prism, observed four or 

 five dark lines crossing the band of coloured light— he recorded the 

 fact, but " supposed it to possess no physical significance." He 

 little thought at the time that this simple fact, enlarged by those 

 who came after him, was destined eventually to lead up to the 

 discovery of that wondrous instrument of modern research, 

 spectrum analysis, by which has been revealed the material 

 composition of the sun and other heavenly bodies, and to which 

 we can at present set no limits, as to what it may have yet to tell 

 us respecting many ten-estrial as well as celestial phenomena. 



But to take, in illustration of this point also, a fact in Natural 

 History, it had been often observed that in the flowers of the 

 common primrose the stamens and pistils were of different relative 

 lengths in diff^erent plants ; sometimes the stamens exceeding the 

 pistils, at other times the pistils exceeding the stamens. By 

 whomsoever this simple observation was first made, it does not 

 seem to have attracted much notice, until Darwin took up the 

 subject, and extended the inquiry to other species of plants, 

 leading in the end to the disco very of those laws of di-and tri- 

 * Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. Ser. 3, vol. xvii., p. leT 

 t Id. Ser. 4, vol. iv., p. 76.^ 



