NA TURE 



365 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1901. 



DARWINISM AND LAMARCKISM, 



OLD AND NEW. 



Four Lectures by Frederick Wollaston Hutlon, F.R.S., Qr'c. 



Pp. X + 171. (London : Duckworth and Co., 1899.) 



THE first of the lectures printed in this volume is en- 

 titled " Darwinism," and it was delivered at the 

 Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 

 1887 ; the second, delivered in 1898 to the same Insti- 

 tute, is upon " The New Darwinism " ; the third, " Dar- 

 winism in Human Affairs," was given in 1882 to the 

 students of Canterbury College, University of New. 

 Zealand ; while the fourth and concluding lecture, " The 

 New Lamarckism," has been added to render the " treat- 

 ment of the subject more complete." 



The author's object has been to make a clear statement 

 of his subject, suitable for readers who are not specialists 

 and " have no time to study more elaborate works." 

 Throughout a large part of the work he has succeeded 

 in this attempt, although there are passages the mean-' 

 ing of which is not carried on the surface. Thus, at the 

 beginning of the Introduction, a quotation from Darwin 

 is concluded with the words, '' This, which was pub- 

 lished in 1859, is strictly correct at the present day"; 

 while the next sentence, opening the succeeding para- 

 graph,, reads, "In 1899 things are different." By 

 reading on, and then turning back to the preceding 

 page, the apparent confusion is removed, but this is 

 hardly the way to make things easy. Similarly, on p. 9, 

 the word " transmitted " is used in a context which 

 seems to imply heredity, and when the conclusion has 

 been assimilated, the next sentence informs us that the 

 word is not used exclusively in this sense. 



The author considers that the increased prominence 

 given to isolation " is the only real advance that has been 

 made since Darwin's death" (p. 5) ; but surely the ques- 

 tion of the hereditary transmission of acquired characters 

 is in a totally different position to-day from what, it was 

 in 1882 ; and the change as regards this subject from 

 the old uncritical, somewhat slipshod attitude of the past 

 must be counted as a very real advance. .Although 

 Lamarck receives generous treatment in the book, Buffon 

 is altogether neglected, his suggested causes of change 

 in the direct influence of the environment being set 

 down to the later zoologist. 



Romanes' term, " physiological selection," is criticised 

 because, " except in the bacteria, species are not founded 

 on physiological characters." The suggested cause of 

 evolution is more than doubtful, but the phrase is certainly 

 a descriptive and appropriate one to express the idea that 

 physiological incompatibility between the germ-cells of 

 certain individuals and those of the rest of the species 

 may be an agency which determines the splitting of a 

 single species into two. The suggested substitution of the 

 phrase "progressive infertility" (p. 12) by no means 

 expresses Romanes' idea ; for he conceived of the in- 

 fertility arising, ready-made and complete, as the result of 

 spontaneous variation. When the author states that 

 species are not founded on physiological characters he 

 forgets (although he himself recognises it elsewhere) that 

 NO. 1633. VOL. 63] 



the physiological characters of fertility inter se and of 

 infertility with other species have been very widely looked 

 upon as among the most important attributes of a species- 

 Thus Huxley's criticism of the evidence for the accept- 

 ance of natural selection may be summed up in the 

 words of his letter to Charles Kingsley : 



" . . . if Carrier and Tumbler e.g. were physiological 

 species equivalent to Horse and Ass, their progeny ought 

 to be sterile or semi-sterile. So far as experience has 

 gone, on the contrary, it is perfectly fertile. . . It has 

 been obvious to me that this is the weak point of 

 Darwin's doctrine. He has shown that selective breeding 

 is a vera causa for morphological species ; he has not 

 shown it a vera causa for physiological species." (" Life 

 and Letters," 1900, vol. i. p. 239.) 



This quotation is introduced merely to show that there 

 is good warrant for Romanes' use of the term "physio- 

 logical" in this connection, not because the present 

 writer believes that the suggested difficulty is insuper- 

 able. 



One of the reasons given for the inference " that the 

 object of physiological evolution was the development of 

 man " seems to be very far-fetched, viz. the existence of a 

 number of elements 



" in the world which appear to be of no use except to 

 man : for example, gold, silver, lead, zinc, &c. . . . Not 

 only were these made for man, but they appear to have 

 been made as rewards for the exercise of his intellect. 

 There are other substances, such as the rarer elements, 

 of which no use seems ever likely to be made except 

 the important one of stimulating enquiry" (p. 19). 



A similar conviction as to the meaning of the beauty 

 and variety of organic forms is expressed on p. 107. 



In the first lecture, " Darwinism," the interesting 

 history of the author's personal experience of evolution 

 is recorded. He had read the "Origin" on its first 

 appearance with avidity, and could detect no flaw in it, 

 but thought that this must be due to his own ignorance. 

 He was soon afterwards convinced by Sir Andrew Ramsay, 

 with whom he went on a geological excursion to the Isle 

 of Wight. In 1861 he wrote an article on the " Origin " 

 in the Geologist, and received an extremely kind and 

 interesting letter from Darwin (p. 34). 



In criticising Darwin's statement that he owed the 

 idea of natural selection to Malthus, a very interesting 

 passage from the "Journal of a Naturalist" is quoted, 

 apparently proving that the fundamental ideas about 

 natural " checks " and " constant food supply " were 

 clearly fixed in his mind at a very early period (pp. 40-41). 

 The reference is not given, but the important passage 

 should be compared in the different editions of the 

 " Journal." 



The statement that Darwin abandoned his hypothesis of 

 pangenesis, "or thought lightly of it "(p. 51), is erroneous. 

 The great " Life and Letters " shows clearly enough 

 that he retained considerable confidence in it even when 

 friends whose opinion he valued very highly did not 

 agree with him. The chief experimental difficulties 

 which oppose it are not alluded to (pp. 59-60), viz. the 

 fact that mutilations, even when continued for a long 

 series of generations, are not inherited, and that trans- 

 fusion of blood and transplantation of tissue do not 

 produce any hereditary influence. 



R 



