228 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



will follow. The naturalists seem as tiinid as young ladies 

 should be, about their scientific reputation." Fortunately, the 

 period produced its man ; one who, having become convinced 

 of the verity of organic evolution, fearlessly disregarded con- 

 ventions and consequences, and became " the great and beloved 

 teacher, the unequalled orator, the brilliant essayist, the un- 

 conquerable champion and literary swordsman." Thus has 

 Thomas Henry Huxley been happily described by Sir Ray 

 Lankester. 



The influence which his friends exercised upon Dar\\dn, and 

 especially the debt which in one direction he owed to Lyell, 

 and in another to Huxley, is also dealt with in an interesting 

 manner in this Section of Professor Poulton's book. Here, too, 

 we read a vivid account of the almost inexplicable opposition 

 which was offered to Evolution by the great anatomists, Richard 

 Owen and St. George Mivart. 



In this Section, Darwdn's attitude towards the idea of 

 evolution by means of mutations is set forth, and the fact that 

 he had considered the possibility of the progress of evolution by 

 large variations is considered. And, in order to leave his reader 

 in no doubt as to Darwin's repudiation of " mutations " as 

 factors in evolution, Professor Poulton cites a paragraph from a 

 letter which Darwdn sent to Lyell, in which he criticised some 

 statement of the late Duke of Argyll. Here Darwin spoke of 

 " the variation in the bill of a bird ' borD ' mth a beak the 

 one-hundredth of an inch longer than usual." The letter then 

 proceeds to say, " The more I work, the more I feel convinced 

 that it is by the accumulation of such extremely slight variations 

 that new species arise." Apparently, one of the chief con- 

 siderations which influenced Darwin to repudiate mutations as 

 steps in evolution was " that it seemed to liim in almost every 

 case the adaptation of structure was too much, too complex, 

 and too beautiful to believe in its sudden production." It 

 is, of course, clear from this statement that Darwin regards a 

 mutation as being necessarily of large moment, a kind of sport or 

 monstrosity. That is not the view which Mendelians hold of 

 mutations. But to this point we shall return. 



Lamarck's hypothesis of the hereditary transmission of 

 acquired characters and the recent attempt of Francis Darwin to 

 amplify it, together with Weismann's theory, are also considered 

 in this Section. The chapter is brought to a conclusion by a 

 singularly eloquent tribute to the pathos of the dramatic conflict, 

 out of which intellectual emancipation arose. " The distance 

 from which we look back on the conflict is a help in the endeavour 

 to realise its meaning." ..." We have passed through one 

 of the world's mighty bloodless revolutions ; and now, standing 



