( f^iv ) 



of enterprise to continue methods and use materials which 

 only require to be thoroughly understood to insure a swift 

 and sudden collapse for all but the most ephemeial purposes. 

 I know no producer, scientific or other, whose self-i-espect 

 would suffer the employment of materials, however good the 

 effect, however low the cost, which would not last over so 

 brief a period as five-and-twenty years. 



I desire to thank Mr. Horace Hart, Controller of the Oxford 

 University Press, and Mr. J. W. North, A.R.A., for the kind 

 manner in which they have freely given information on this 

 most important matter. 



I now pass to the subject of my Address : — 



"The bearing of the Study of Insects upon the question, 

 'Are Acquired Characters Hereditary'?'" 



To those who incline to criticize the subject of this Address 

 as a raking of the embers of a dead and almost forgotten fire, 

 I would reply that the controversy which spi-ang into sudden 

 flame — in this countiy in the year 1887 — is still a great 

 memory. I trust that it will ever remain as a great memory. 

 Of August Weismann it has been well said that " he awoke 

 us from our dogmatic sleep." He made us realize that 

 cherished convictions upon fundamental questions were based 

 on nothing more solid than assumptions, and tlius administered 

 the most stimulating shock that has been received by the 

 biological Avorld since the appearance of the '' Oi'igin of 

 Species." 



It was impossible that a controversy of this magnitude 

 could be conducted without frequent appeals to the Insecta. 

 Their structures, functions, and instincts ottered evidence so 

 striki n g in character, and upon a scale so vast, that discussion 

 was inevitably attracted again and again towards this centre. 

 Indeed, the controversy would have been but one-sided, the 

 conclusion unconvincing, had it been otheruuse. At the same 

 time discussion is and must be free and, being free, is almost 

 necessarily scattered. To attempt therefore to disentangle 

 from the mass and to present as a whole the evidence offered 

 by the study of insects is of value in two ways. First, we are 

 made to realize the importance of our study : by the contem- 



