November 6, 1919] 



NATURE 



201 



of phagocytes to injured and diseased tissues is 

 facilitated. 



General Retrospect. 



All these developments will be found recorded 

 in successive volumes of Nature, in reviews of 

 books, correspondence, and articles. In this way 

 greater perfection of record and comprehensive- 

 ness of treatment have been attained than in any 

 other scientific journal. 



Whilst all these studies were going on, the 

 more direct observations by the Darwinian method 

 have been accumulating enormously. Classifica- 

 tion and general views on morphology have been 

 affected accordingly. Various serious attempts 

 have been made to improve upon or to add to 

 Darwinian theory, perhaps to its detriment. One 

 example of this is Romanes's notion of physio- 

 logical selection. Another is the attention given 

 to the experiments and conclusions as to hybrid 

 breeding of the Abbe IVIendel. Mendel's conclu- 

 sions differ but little from those contained in 

 Darwin's own work, as was pointed out in a 

 letter to Nature for August 14 last, p. 463. No 

 doubt the breeding experiments which are now 

 carried out in the name of Mendel might equally 

 well be performed in the name of Darwin. The 

 importance of this work was little assisted by 

 those interested in Mendelism, when in the early 

 days they called it a "new science." 



Within the limits of a short survey it is impos- 

 sible to measure the heights of more than a few 

 peaks of biological science, or to describe the 

 boundaries of even a few fields of work. Others 

 will deal with particular branches of biology, 

 including psychology, which will be developed in 

 the near future as the basis of anthropology, and 

 should be to education what physiology is to 

 medicine. Physiology itself has yet to come 



under the full influence of the Darwinian doctrine 

 — "the preservation of favoured races in the 

 struggle for life." As yet there has been no in- 

 ' vestigation of the development and survival of 

 functions. It is necessary to study their evolu- 

 tion from simpler types and to analyse by experi- 

 ment the progressive series of chemical activities 

 involved in digestion, secretion, excretion, and so 

 on. At present physiology is as incomplete as 

 morphology would be if no forms below terres- 

 i trial vertebrates had been studied. 

 I In concluding this sketch I desire to bear 

 i testimony to the valuable services in the promo- 

 [ tion of scientific progress which Nature has ren- 

 ; dered throughout its existence. In the hundred 

 and three volumes which have been published 

 since 1869 the names of all the most active 

 workers in the realm of natural knowledge will 

 be found in their pages, not only in papers and 

 books recorded and epitomised, but also as the 

 authors of articles, letters, and other contribu- 

 tions. Every man of science knows the useful 

 function performed by Nature, and appreciates 

 its essential importance to the vitality of the 

 scientific organism. I am particularly glad that 

 my friend, Sir Norman Lockyer, has lived to see 

 '. the completion of the fiftieth year of the journal 

 established by him. The high and secure position 

 which Nature occupies is due to the sympathetic, 

 impartial, and honourable editorial traditions 

 gained for it by him and still maintained. As a 

 personal friend I cherish the recollection of asso- 

 ciation with the founder of the journal through- 

 out the long period of its existence, and with all 

 other scientific workers I tender him grateful con- 

 ! gratulations for wh^t he has done through it to 

 stimulate the increase and application of know- 

 j ledge. • , 



SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH. 



By the Ven. James M. Wilson, D.D., Canon and Vice-Dean of Worcester. 



THE Editor of Nature reminds me that in its 

 first year of publication I was one of its 

 contributors, and he asks me to write something 

 for its jubilee issue. He goes on, further, to 

 assign me a subject — "The General Attitude of the 

 Church and the Religious Laity towards Science 

 now compared with what it was fifty years 

 ago " — and he limits me to " about a thousand 

 words." It is a suflRciently large subject for, 

 say, ten or twenty thousand, and yet I am going 

 to double that subject by adding the words "and 

 that of the scientific world towards the Church." 

 I think there has been an equal change in both, 

 and I take the latter half first. 



About fifty years ago I was more at home in 

 the scientific than in the clerical world. I was 

 NO. 2610, VOL. 104] 



a fair mathematician ; an enthusiastic, though 

 ill-equipped, teacher of science ; an observer in 

 astronomy ; on the council of the Royal Astro- 

 nomical Society ; and associated with Huxley and 

 Tyndall in a small British Association Committee 

 on teaching science in schools. They were among 

 my friends. I had also many friends among 

 the rank and file of men of science. .Such 

 are my credentials to speak of the attitude at 

 that time of men of the scientific World to the 

 Church. 



That world, impressed and dazzled as it was 

 by the vast extension of the sphere of the natural 

 • — that is, of what was sure to recur in like 

 physical circumstances — felt, speaking generally, 

 that "the Church," which insisted on the super- 



M 



