176 



NATURE 



[October 6, 192 1 



Letters to the Editor. 



{The Editor does not hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return, or to correspond with 

 the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications.] 



The Resting-place of Robert Boyle. 



Some months ago, having become very much 

 interested in the life and work of the famous English 

 philosopher, the Hon. Robert Boyle, and animated 

 to a certain extent by the spirit of the pilgrim, I 

 thought 1 would go and look at his last resting-place. 

 According to Thomas Birch, who brought out in five 

 folio volumes the works of Boyle with a " Life " in 

 the year 1744, the philosopher died on December 30, 

 1691, seven days after his sister Katherine, Lady 

 Ranelagh, with whom he had been keeping house in 

 Pall Mall for more than twenty years. Brother and 

 sister were buried in the chancel of St. Martin 's-in- 

 the-Fields. 



On reaching the church I learned that the old 

 church in which they had been laid was pulled down 

 in 172 1 and replaced by the present edifice. On 

 inquiry of the rector he referred me to his church- 

 warden, Mr. John MacMaster, from whom and from 

 his interesting book on the church the following facts 

 are derived : — 



The foundation-stone of the new church was laid 

 by the Bishop of Salisbury on March ig, 172 1. James 

 Gibbs, a pupil of Wren's, was the architect. "As the 

 bodies buried in the church and part of the church- 

 yard would be disturbed during the rebuilding, an 

 advertisement was inserted in the newspapers notify- 

 ing that the bodies and monuments of anv of those 

 buried could be taken awav for reinterment bv rela- 

 tives on application to the Vicar, Wardens, and Com- 

 missioners. Several bodies and monuments were 

 removed." It appears, however, that applications for 

 permission to set up family monuments in the same 

 position in the new church as in the old were not 

 granted, and those monuments from the old church 

 which were not taken away by relatives were stored 

 under the tabernacle or, in some cases, set up in the 

 vaults and crvpt of the present church. It is on 

 record that " Robert Boyle, the gifted son of the Earl 

 of Burlington," was among those buried in the 

 church, but no systematic account was kept of the 

 disposal of the remains in the old church, and there 

 is no monument bearing the name of Bovle in the 

 crypt at the present day. 



.As it seemed oossible that there might be so'-'^p 

 tradition in the familv of action taken bv them i" 

 172 1 to preserve the remains of the philosopher. T 

 wrote to the present Earl of Cork and Orrerv, but 

 could get no information. Later, Ladv Grace Baring 

 (nie Bovle") informed me that after looking into books 

 of familv records in her possession no clue could be 

 found to the mvsterv of Robert Boyle. 



It is remarkable that B'rch's account of the funeral 

 and burial should have been published without com- 

 ment or correction in T7/14, or more than twentv 

 vears after the destruction of the old church. No 

 modern biographer seems to have inquired further 

 into the matter, and it seems probable that the last 

 resting-place of the " Father of Chemistry " will 

 remain unknown to the end of time. 



William A. Tilden. 



September. 



NO. 2710, VOL. 108] 



Biological Terminology. 



Dr. Bather (Nature, .\ugust 18, p. 778) wishes me 

 to explain my glaring truism, "Variation is the sole 

 cause of non-inheritance : apart from variations, like 

 exactly begets like when parent and child develop 

 under like conditions " [of nurture]. But does it need 

 explaining? As he says, and as I have insisted, 

 variation is non-inheritance, and for that reason the 

 truism is glaring. The words "the sole cause of " are 

 really redundant, and were introduced merely to em- 

 phasise the fact that there is no other cause. My 

 justification for framing the truism lies in the fact 

 that that truth is more honoured in breach than in 

 observance in biological discussions. I have already 

 expressed myself much in the following terms, but 

 some repetition seems necessary. Every character is 

 a product of antecedent and exciting cause, of nature 

 and nurture, of potentiality and stimulus, of power 

 to develop and opportunity to develop. Since the 

 multicellular individual is derived from a germ, he 

 can inherit onlv through it. In the germ are none 

 of the characters subsequently developed in the soma, 

 but only powers to develop them. Therefore, strictly 

 speaking, he inherits nothing but these powers, the 

 sum of which is his nature, while the sum of the 

 influences which cause change (or arrest it) is his 

 nurture. By a colloquialism, which is pardonable 

 since it confuses no one, we speak of a child inherit- 

 ing his parent's eyes, or hair, and so on. If a child 

 in response to similar nurture produces hair like his 

 parent's, he has not varied in this respect; he has 

 inherited ; he is like his parent both by nature and 

 through nurture. If he develops different hair in 

 response to similar nurture, he has varied ; to that 

 extent he has not inherited. If owing merely to 

 different nurture (e.g. injury) he produces different 

 hair, or even none at all, he has inherited, but not 

 reproduced. 



Inheritance is altogether an affair of nature; repro- 

 duction implies the added element of nurture. Re- 

 production is proof of inheritance ; but non-reproduc- 

 tion is not proof of non-inheritance. There is, 

 indeed, massive evidence of inheritance without re- 

 production — e.g. in latent ancestral traits, male 

 characters in the summer generation of aphides, and 

 the recessive in the impure dominant. If for " hair " 

 we substitute in the foregoing ajjy of the characters 

 which biologists call "acquired," and use our words 

 with the same meanings, then all I have said remains 

 exactly true. For example, if a parent and child 

 receive similar injuries and develop similar scars, then 

 the child inherits the scar. He would really have in- 

 herited even if he had not received the injury and 

 developed the scar. But biologists no not give their 

 words with the same meanings. If a child produces 

 an " acquired character " in the same way as the parent 

 did (if he is like the parent both by nature and through 

 nurture), thev sav he has not inherited, but acquired, 

 that trait afresh— as if every trait were not acauired 

 afresh everv time. They assume that he would " in- 

 herit " onlv if he reproduced the same trait in resoonse 

 to some different nurture, only if he did not inherit, 

 onlv if he were unlike the parent both bv nature and 

 through nurture. The word "inherit" now means 

 "varv." Now comes my point. The truism is 

 founded on the assumption that a'l characters that can 

 possiblv be developed are, necessarily, and in exactlv 

 the same sense, eauallv innate, acauired, germinal, 

 somatic, and inheritable. Nearly all biological discus- 

 sions (e.(f. the Neo-Lamarckian and Neo-Darwinian) 

 are based on contrarv assumptions, and imply, there- 

 fore, the denial of the truism. If it were accepted 

 and borne in mind, most of the labours and disputes 



