128 



NATURE 



{June 17, 1875 



of in the ordinary winter temperature. Most of the 

 nymphas passed the winter even in hothouses or in 

 heated rooms, and produced V. levana in the spring. 

 Similar researches were made by Weismann with another 

 common day-butterfly species, Pieris napi. 



Weismann thinks that the winter form of these butter- 

 flies was the original one, which existed alone and in a 

 single annual generation in Europe, during the so-called 

 ice period. As the summers became longer and warmer, 

 a second and finally a third annual generation could be 

 produced, and these were changed to the Prorsa form by 

 the higher temperature. The return of the colder season 

 then always caused a return to the original form 

 {Afavuin), just as it occurred in the experiments. To 

 confirm this view, Weismann quotes the fact that in Lap- 

 land and in the upper Alps only a winter form of P. napi 

 exists. As with an incomplete return to the original form 

 intermediate forms result, the varying aspects of which 

 prove that the change of the original form always takes 

 place in a certain direction, Weismann thinks that the 

 change of temperature might certainly have given the 

 impulse for a change of form, but that the particular 

 direction of the same lies in the constitution of the animal in 

 question. We may certainly consider as a result of these 

 investigations, that a change of climate, together with 

 other causes, may have directly produced a great number 

 of different species of butterflies. 



Another fact m.entioned by Weismann refers to the 

 above, and is no less interesting. There is one of the 

 lower Crustaceae, Leptodora hyalina (Siebold's and Kol- 

 liker's Zeitschrift Jiir Wissenschaftliche Zoologte, 1875), 

 which is remarkable in many ways. This animal, ac- 

 cording to the observations of the Norwegian Sars, shows 

 similar phenomena, as the winter breed is differently 

 developed from the summer breed, although the perfect 

 forms are not so widely different as those of the butter- 

 flies. 



N' 



ZOOLOGICAL NONSENSE 

 OT many months since a controversy which had 

 been raging for several weeks in the columns of the 

 so-called " leading journal " was suddenly and completely 

 put an end to by a well-known writer in a contemporary 

 calmly and dispassionately pointing out that both dis- 

 putants had been uttering what was absolute nonsense, 

 " I use the word nonsense," he went on to say, " not as it 

 is often used as a vague term of disapproval, but with a 

 strict specific meaning, as contradistinguished from sense. 

 All words — all articulate words- — must be either sense or 

 nonsense. They are sense if their meaning can be ima- 

 gined, conceived, represented in some way or other to the 

 mind. They are nonsense if their meaning cannot be 

 imagined, conceived, or represented in any way to the 

 mind. When a man says, ' I saw six men and two women 

 walking down such a street, dressed in such a way, and 

 heard them talking on such a subject,' anyone can under- 

 stand, whether he believes it or not. The speaker is 

 talking sense, whether truly or falsely. If he were to say 

 he saw two crooked straight lines standing in the five 

 corners of a square, you would say he was talking non- 

 sense, that his words were neither true nor false, and that 

 he might as well keep silence, or utter any other unmeaning 

 sounds. The difference between these two examples 

 consists solely in this, that the first assertion can, whereas 

 the last cannot, be pictured to the mind. Each particular 

 word by itself is as clear in the one case as in the other." 

 _ What the question then under discussion was, does not 

 signify. Enough that it was nothing which had to do 

 with natural science. But we are sorry to say that non- 

 sense is still occasionally spoken or written by those who, 

 if they do not exactly profess to be scientific, yet pretend 

 to treat of things that clearly belong to the domain of 

 science, and so make some approach to that character. 



Moreover, they are looked up to by some well-meaning 

 though imperfectly instructed persons as authorities 

 worthy of consideration. There was a time when there 

 was a good deal of nonsense written by naturalists, and 

 especially by zoologists, but we had been in hopes that 

 the practice was entirely given up. It seems, however, 

 that we are disappointed. Here is a melancholy instance 

 to which our attention has lately been called : — 



" I have never seen any reason to doubt, yfrj/, that the 

 Vertebrata, or more properly * Endosteata,' are the 

 central group of the animal kingdom, the others being 

 the Exosteates (or Articulates), the Anosteates (or Mol- 

 luscs), and the Actiniates (or Radiates) ; secondly, that 

 the Sucklers are the central group of Endosteates, the 

 other groups being Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes ; the 

 Sucklers are connected with Birds through the Bats, with 

 Reptiles through Pangolins and Armadillos, and with 

 Fishes through Porpoises and Whales. The pectoral 

 sucklers (Primates) are central, and Man is the centre of 

 these — not a mere unit on the circumference of the 

 system." 



There is no need to name the writer of this passage or 

 the publication in which it appeared within the last few 

 weeks, because our business is with the matter, not with 

 the man, though we can hardly do otherwise than marvel 

 at his style of easy assurance — " I have never seen any 

 reason to doubt." We at first almost fear a platitude, 

 then catching a glimpse of what is coming, we begin to 

 think we are on the verge of a great discovery, or per- 

 haps shall be brought face to face with intelligence itself. 

 Sad is our disappointment as the sentence proceeds. The 

 unwonted word " Endosteata " jars our bones within us, 

 but we recover as we best can, and so far suppose it is all 

 right ; the expression of a " central group " may pass as 

 a metaphor, and we feel a sense of relief and obligation 

 at having the extraordinary names of the other groups 

 translated for us ; but then we thought we had somewhere 

 been taught the Radiates had no existence. However, 

 we hail a friendly semicolon, and find that we are arrived 

 at the end of the author's first article of faith, which, 

 though obscured by the metaphor, is yet intelligible. 

 Now, then, for his " secondly." The word " Sucklers " 

 strikes us as singular, but we discover that whatever it 

 means forms another " central group," this time of 

 " Endosteates " ; so, to meet metaphor by metaphor, we 

 exclaim " wheels within wheels," and it is a comfort to 

 find that the surrounding groups are our old friends 

 Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes ; Amphibians, we suppose, 

 being packed between the two latter. The next part of 

 the sentence, however, is absolutely shocking : " Sucklers" 

 connected with Birds through Bats, with Reptiles through 

 Pangolins and Armadillos, and so on. Why, what is a 

 zoological connection "i Is it of affinity or analogy ? 

 Can the author have ever seen or examined the structure 

 of the animals he mentions .? We are taken back to the 

 dark ages of zoology, if not to ages almost prehistoric. 

 Needless to say that our confidence is gone. Then we 

 have the concluding sentence with the old metaphor once 

 more, and a new one ; or is it that no metaphor is 

 intended after all ? that these concentric circles forming 

 a system with a circumference on which man is not a unit 

 — we wonder who ever said he was — exist in the author's 

 mind ? In our own we are free to say they do not. 

 We are sure that they do not exist in nature, and we are 

 so unimaginative that we cannot picture a representation 

 of them to ourselves. Accordingly there is no help for it 

 but to conclude that all this is clear, unmistakable, imde- 

 niable nonsense, as much so as the two crooked straight 

 lines standing in the five corners of a square. These 

 " circles," with their unit-tearing circumference, are, in 

 the words of the writer from whom we first quoted, "the 

 nonsensical shreds of exploded metaphysics " — rehcs of 

 that silly " circular system " with its mystical numbers, its 

 fives or its sevens — the will-o'-the-wisp of fancy that once 



