176 ERYTHEA. 
tingly to reconstruct it. The attempt rarely seems to me 
successful, perhaps because the limits of the laboratory are 
unfavorable to the accumulation of the class of observations 
which are suitable for the purpose. The laboratory, in fact, 
has not contributed much to the Darwinian theory, except 
the ‘ Law of Recapitulation,’ and that, I am told, is going out 
of fashion. 
The Darwinian theory, being, as I have attempted to 
show, the outcome of the Natural History method, rested at 
every point on a copious basis of fact and observation. 
This, more modern speculation lacks. The result is a 
revival of transcendentalism. Of this we have had a copious 
crop in this country, but it is quite put in the shade by that 
with which we have been supplied from America. Perhaps 
the most remarkable feature is the persistent. vitality of 
Lamarckism. As Darwin remarks: ‘ Lamarck’s one sugges- 
tion as to the cause of the gradual modification of species— 
effort excited by change of conditions-—was, on the face of it, 
inapplicable to the whole vegetable world’ (ii. 189). And if 
we fall back on the inherited direct effect of change of 
conditions, though Darwin admits that ‘ physical conditions 
have a more direct effect on plants than on animals’ 
(ii. 319), I have never been able to convince myself that 
that effect is inherited. I will give one illustration. The 
difference in habit of even the same species of plant when 
grown under mountain and lowland conditions is a matter of 
general observation. It would be difficult to imagine a case 
of ‘ acquired characters’ more likely to be ‘inherited.’ But 
this does not seem to be the case. The recent careful 
research of Gaston Bonnier only confirms the experience of 
cultivators. ‘The modifications acquired by the plant when 
transported for a definite time from the plains to the Alps, or 
vice versa, disappear at the end of the same period when the 
plant is restored to its original conditions.’ # 
Darwin, in an eloquent passage, which is too long for me 
24 Ann. d. Sc. nat., 7° sér. xx. 355, 
