Vol. XXIV. No. 7.] 
POPULAR SCIENCE NEWS. 
107 
some of the ablest biologists of the day, to indicate 
that external influences and direct inheritance are, 
after all, larger factors in the production of new- 
species than the perpetuation of useful congenital 
modifications. Thus, while there are few naturalists 
who are not evolutionists, there are many who must 
be classed as Neo-Lamarckians rather than Darwin- 
ians. Of the two originators of Darwinism, Alfred 
Russel Wallace, as is well known, stands firm for 
the overwhelming importance of natural selection 
over every other agent in evolution. The exact 
position held by Darwin is not so easy to ascertain. 
It is certain that he believed natural selection to be 
the most important means of modification. At the 
same time he attached great weight to the principle 
of sexual selection, and expressed himself cautiously 
regarding the direct efiects of environment, use and 
disuse of organs, and the transmission of acquired 
characters. Exactly how much or how little these 
were, in his opinion, subordinate to natural selec- 
tion, is a matter of keen dispute, and passages 
quoted from his works have received various inter- 
pretations. 
To scientific woikers it is stimulating that the 
explanation of some facts should involve wide dif- 
ferences of opinion — dilVerences that can be adjusted, 
in many cases, only by fresh discoveries. The gen- 
eral reader, however, is apt to become a little puz- 
zled. He reads, here, that the action of natural 
selection is paramount; there, that it is compara- 
tively unimportant; in one place, that environment, 
use and disuse of organs, and the laws of heredity 
can explain all phenomena; in another, that they 
must be attributed to an innate tendency of the 
organism to vary. In such a condition of aflairs he 
knows not where to look for the positive state- 
ments that he may safely adopt, and inclines to the 
belief that there is no truth in any of these " scien- 
tifi(*speculations." Mr. Wallace's "Darwinism" is 
thus most opportune, giving, as it does, not only a 
lucid explanation of natural selection itself, but a 
discussion of the problems and difficulties that have 
led so many eminent men to minimize its action. 
These difficulties Mr. Wallace has treated with 
the same clearness that distinguishes his exposition 
of Darwinism, and in a tone that is admirable in its 
self-restraint and courtesy. The views of Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer on modification of structures arising 
from modification of functions; the similar but 
more detailed views of Dr. E. D. Cope ; those of Dr. 
Karl Semper on the natural conditions of existence 
as they aflTect animal life; and of Mr. Patrick 
Geddes, urging that fundamental laws of growth, 
and the antagonism of vegetative and reproductive 
forces, account for much that has been imputed 
to natural selection; the Rev. J. G. Gulick's theory 
of isolation as a prime factor of divergence; and 
Mr. G. J. Romane's physiological selection; — all 
these receive consideration. The more important 
facts and arguments on which each theory seems to 
rest are brought forward by Mr. Wallace, who, in 
every case, considers that they could have been 
explained as well or better by the action of natural 
selection. 
This position Mr. Wallace finds to be supported 
by Prof August Weismann's new theory of heredity, 
which makes the starling-point of the growth of a 
child, a minute portion of the very same substance 
from which, first the germ cell, and then the whole 
organism of the parent, were developed. This sub- 
stance of special molecular composition — called 
germ-plasm by Prof. Weismann— is thus handed on 
from generation to generation, producing, through 
the various combinations involved, an infinite pos- 
sibility of variation on which natural selection may 
work. The characters, therefore, that are trans- 
mitted from parents to ofispring are — according to 
Weismann — those that were latent in the gerrn- 
plasm from which the parents were themselves 
developed, some part of which stored within them 
for the production of a new generation is passed on 
without carrying with it any of the characters 
acquired during the life of either parent. 
Even though Mr. Wallace finds that in no case 
have the Neo-Lamarckians been able materially to 
diminish the power of natural selection, and that 
Weismann's theory of heredity strongly supports it, 
it must by no means be concluded that the last 
word has yet been spoken. The almost simulta- 
neous appearance of Wallace's "Darwinism" and 
an English translation of Weismann's essays on 
heredity, at the close of last summer, led to very- 
vigorous formal and informal discussion among the 
naturalists assembled, in September, at the meeting 
of the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science. Knowledge born of minute research in 
special lines was brought to bear on this question 
of the transmission of acquired characters, and the 
views stated by the leading biologists may be found 
in the September issues of the London Kature. 
The pages of Nature, also, have been, and still are, 
open to further discussion. Dr. Ray Lankester, 
Prof. Romanes, the Rev. J. G. Gulick, Herbert 
Spencer, Sidney Vines, the Duke of Argyll, Dr. 
E. D. Cope, Thistleton Dyer, and Weismann and 
Wallace themselves, have all written on this impor- 
tant subject, and the controversy is not finished yet. 
It is probable that it must remain open until the 
discovery of fresh facts shall make some points 
clear, or until — as suggested by Mr. F. Gallon — 
feasible experiments can be designed that shall Ije 
accepted as crucial tests of the possibility of a 
parent transmitting a congenital aptitude to his 
children, which he himself possessed not congeni- 
taliy, but merely through long and distasteful prac- 
tice under some sort of compulsion. 
But, while Mr. Wallace is convinced that natural 
selection is supreme as an agent of the modification 
of organisms, he is by no means inclined to claim 
for it unlimited power. There is a point at which it 
must, he thinks, stop short; and this point is the 
moral and intellectual nature of man. Darwin's 
conclusion as to the essential identity of man's 
bodily structure with that of the higher mammalia, 
and his descent from some ancestral form common 
to man and the anthropoid apes, is fully accepted by 
Mr. Wallace. But when Darwin goes on to derive 
the moral nature and mental faculties of man by 
gradual modification and development of their rudi- 
ments in the lower animals, in the same manner 
and by the action of the same general laws that 
produced his physical structure, Mr. Wallace takes 
issue with him. Natural selection cannot, in his 
opinion, have produced those emotions and faculties 
that form an unbridged chasm between man and 
even the most mentally endowed of the animal 
kingdom. Taking the matiiematical, musical, and 
artistic faculties as examples, Mr. Wallace maintains 
by two lines of argument that natural selection has 
had nothing to do with their development. What 
relation, he asks, have the successive stages of im- 
provement of the mathematical faculty had to the 
life or death of its possessors.' to the struggles 
of tribe with tribe.-' or nation with nation? or the 
ultimate survival of one race and the extinction 
of another? Again, natural selection by its very 
nature acts only on useful or hurtful characteristics, 
eliminating the latter and keeping the former to a 
fairly general level of efficiency. The characters 
developed by its means should, therefore, he holds, 
be present to some degree in all the individuals of a 
species; and, as a matter of fact, there are found in 
all savages those qualities which were essential to 
man in the early stages of his development. But in 
civilized man specially developed faculties — such as 
the mathematical, musical, artistic, metaphysical, 
and those of wit and humor — are but the endow- 
ment of the favored few, while the diflference 
betw-een the capacity of these few and that of the 
average of mankind enormously surpasses the 
limits in which natural selection can work. 
Whence, then, came these and other human 
faculties? Science can, at present, give no positive 
answer. To Mr. Wallace science is not the only- 
source from which light may fall on the problems 
of life. The endowment of man with faculties such 
as those discussed points clearly, he believes, to the 
existence in man of an essence or nature derived 
from an unseen universe — the world of spirit, 
which to Mr. Wallace is as real as the world of mat- 
ter that he considers subordinate to it. It is on the 
hypothesis of this spiritual nature, superadded to 
the animal nature of man, that we can, he says, 
alone "understand the constancy of the martyr, 
the unselfishness of the philanthropist, the devotion 
of the patriot, the enthusiasm of the artist, and the 
resolute and persevering search of the scientific 
w-orker after Nature's secrets." In the love of truth, 
moreover, " in the delight in beauty, the passion for 
justice, and the thrill of exultation with which we 
hear of any act of courageous self-sacrifice," Mr. 
Wallace perceives the workings of a nature beyond 
and above anything that could have been evolved 
by any process of selection. In this conclusion, 
however, Mr. Wallace stands among evolutionists 
almost, if not altogether, alone. 
[Specially Observed for Popular Science A'ews.] 
METEOROLOGY FOR MAY, 1S90, WITH 
REVIEW OF THE SPRING. 
TEMPERATURE. 
Average Thermometer. 
At 7 A. M. . . 
At 2 P. M. . . 
At 9 P. M. . . 
Whole Month . 
Second Average 
Last 30 Mays 
Second Average 
Spring of 1890 . 
Last 30 Springs 
66.55° 
54-58° 
si-i'' 
Sl-iS' 
57-6i' 
56.83' 
46.14° 
45- M" 
Lowest. 
Highest. 
42- 
50° 
44 
42° 
42- 
66° 
So° 
64' 
So° 
So° 
lin^V^l 
64.28° j 
in 18S0. ! 
50/17° 
63.64° 
4° 
80° 
( m 1S75. 
49.46° j 
in 1889. ) 
Range. 
24- 
30 
20° 
3S° 
38° 
"-94 
12.97- 
76° 
7-3>° 
The lowest point of the thermometer the past 
month was 42", on the 2d, and this was also the 
coolest day, with an average of 46 33°. The 8th 
was 3° warmer. The highest point was 80°, on the 
14th, which was also the warmest day, averaging 
68 66". The entire month was 1.32" above the 
average of the last twenty Mays. The lowest daily 
range was 4"-", on the 8th ; the highest 25'', on the 
1st. The excess of heat above the average since 
January i has been 544*^, an average daily excess 
of 3.6". The season continues about one week in 
advance. 
The average temperature of the present spring 
has been just 1° above that of the last tw-enty years. 
SKY. 
The face of the sky, in 93 observations, gave 42 
fair, 19 cloudy, 22 overcast, and 10 rainy, — a per- 
centage of 45 2 fair. The average fair for the last 
tw-enty Mays has been 54 2, with extremes of only 
29 in 1888, and 78.5 in 1871, — a wide range of 49 5. 
A foggy morning on the 25th, a thunder-storm at 
noon on the 4th, a beautiful rainbow at 6 P. M. on 
the 28th, and a large meteor on the evening of the 
14th, combine to add variety to the phenomena 
of the month. The meteor was observed by a 
neighbor and his daughter, who describe it as a. 
