August 26, 1897] 



NATURE 



409 



rarely in Biology. I diverge from him when he says that 

 " each animal is compelled to discover its parentage in its own 

 development," that "every animal in its own de%elopment re- 

 peats this history, and climbs up its own genealogical tree." 

 When he declares that " the proof of the theory depends chiefly 

 on its universal applicability to all animals, whether high or 

 low in the zoological scale, and to all their parts and organs," ' 

 I feel persuaded that, if this is really so, the Recapitulation 

 Theory will never be proved at all. The development, so far 

 as it has yet been traced, of a Hydra, Peripatus, Beetle, Pond- 

 mussel, Squid, Amphioxus, Chick or Mammal tells us very 

 little indeed of the history of the races to which they Ijelong. 

 Development tells us something, I admit, and that something 

 is welcome, but it gives no answer at all to most of the ques- 

 tions that we put. The development of a Mammal, for in- 

 stance, brings to light what I take to be clear proof of a piscine 

 stage ; but the stage or stages immediately previous can only 

 be vaguely described as Vertebrate, and when we go back 

 further still, all resemblance to particular adult animals is lost. 

 The best facts of the Recapitulationist are striking and valuable, 

 but they are much rarer than the thorough-going Recapitula- 

 tionist admits ; he has picked out all the big strawberries, and 

 put them at the top of the basket. I admit no sort of necessity 

 for the recapitulation of the events of the phylogeny in the 

 development of the individual. Whenever any biologist brings 

 the word must into his statement of the operations of living 

 nature, I look out to see whether he will not shortly fall into 

 trouble. 



This hasty review of animal transformations reminds me how 

 great is the part of adaptation in nature. To many naturalists 

 the study of adaptations is the popular and superficial side of 

 things ; that which they take to be truly scientific is some kind 

 of index-making. But we should recognise that comparatively 

 modern adaptations may be of vital importance to the species, 

 and particularly luminous to the student because at times they 

 show us nature at work. 



I am accustomed to refer such adaptations to the process of 

 Natural Selection, though if any one claimed to explain them 

 by another process, I should, for present purposes, cheerfully 

 adopt a more neutral phrase. There are, I believe, no lirnits 

 to be assigned to the action of Natural Selection upon living 

 plants and animals. Natural Selection can act upon the egg, 

 the embryo, the larva, and the resting pupa, as well as upon 

 the adult capable of propagation. It can even influence the 

 race through individuals which are not in the line of descent 

 at all, such as adults past bearing or the neuters of a colony. 

 The distinction between historical and adaptive, palingenetic 

 and ccenogenetic, is relative only, a difference not of kind but 

 of degree. All features are adaptive, but they may be adapted 

 to a past rather than to a present state of things ; they may be 

 ancient, and deeply impressed upon the organisation of the 

 class. 



In Biology facts without thought are nothing ; thought with- 

 out facts is nothing ; thought applied to concrete facts may 

 come to something when time has sorted out what is true from 

 what is merely plausible. The Reports of this Association will 

 be preserved here and there in great libraries till a date when 

 the biological speculations of 1897 ^""C as extinct as the Ptole- 

 maic Astronomy. If many years hence some one should turn 

 over the old volumes, and light upon this long- forgotten address, 

 I hope that he will give me credit for having seen what was 

 coming. Except where the urgent need of brevity has for the 

 moment been too much for scientific caution, I trust that he 

 will find nothing that is dogmatic or over-confident in my 

 remarks. 



SECTION G. 



mechanical science. 



Opening Address by G. F. Deacon, M.Inst.C.E., 



President of the Section. 

 In this ever-memorable year of the Victorian Age, it is not 

 unnatural that any one called to fill the chair I occupy to-day 

 should experience a sense of oppression, when contemplating 

 the fruits of mechanical science during the last sixty years, and 

 the tremendous vista, fading in the distance to a dream, of the 



1 The quotations are from the late Prof. A. Milnes Marshall's Address to 

 Section D, British Association Report, 1890, which states the Recapitula- 

 tionist case with great knowledge and skill. 



NO. 1452, VOL. 56] 



fruits it is destined to produce before such another period shall 

 have passed away. 



There would be no possibility, in the time at my disposal, 

 even if I were qualified to attempt it, of adequately reviewing 

 the past ; and however fascinating the thought may be, it 

 would ill become my office to venture far along the vista before 

 us, lest a too airy imagination should break the bonds of that 

 knowledge and that truth to which she must ever remain, in 

 our rightful speculations, a helpful, if not always an obedient, 

 handmaiden. 



In the year 1831, two places, the one ancient and memorable, 

 the other young, but destined to become memorable, bore the 

 name of York. At the first of these, amid relics of ancient 

 Rome and lasting memorials of the better phases of Britain's 

 mediaeval history, were met together in that year the earliest 

 members of the British Association. And as the sun at noon- 

 day shone on that ancient York, it rose upon the other York — 

 a little town, scarcely more than a village, of 1700 people, 

 fast springing from a plain on the shores of Ontario, where the 

 wigwam of the Chippewa had lately been ; and between the two 

 two lay the Atlantic and a distance of 4000 miles. 



Sixty-six years later, the British Association meets in that 

 other York, distinguished under the name of Toronto, and 

 grown into a noble city. Painfully, in stage coaches, must 

 many of the founders of this Association have travelled to that 

 ancient York ; peacefully and amid all comfort and luxury have 

 we from the mother country reached, at her invitation, this 

 great city — chiefest, in its people, its commerce, and its 

 University, of the cities of Western Canada. 



Neither at the meeting in York of 1831, nor elsewhere, until 

 many years later, was there any expectation of the possibility of 

 these things. Six years later, about the beginning of that 

 glorious reign of which the sixty-first year is now passing — 

 although two or three vessels had already crossed the Atlantic 

 under steam, it was still seriously doubted whether, without the 

 aid of a Government subsidy of considerable amount, a line of 

 steamers, even for the New York service, could be permanently 

 maintained. It was not, indeed, until 1838 that the Great 

 Western inaugurated the attempt on a commercial basis, and 

 she performed in fifteen days the voyage which is now regularly 

 performed with complete commercial success in five. 



Would not the suggestion of such a change, of such a spanning 

 of great distances, of such a consequent growth of prosperity 

 and of culture, within the reign of a princess then approaching 

 womanhood, have been received as the wildest of forecasts by 

 the British Association of 1831 ? 



Yet this is but one of a multitude of results, no less startling, 

 which the same agencies have brought about. We are now 

 holding the second meeting of the Association in Canada, and 

 at the first such meeting, held thirteen years ago in Montreal, 

 some hundreds of miles nearer home. Sir Frederick Bramwell 

 told you from this chair, in his own inimitable way, the causes 

 of so great a change, and he pointed out to you, as I venture 

 to point out again, that the visible instruments of that change 

 have been forged by the men who are, or were, or ought to be, 

 the members of Section G. To such encouragement as Section 

 G has given is largely due the progress and triumph of applied 

 mechanics as the natural outcome of theoretical investigation 

 and physical research. Finally, and with no reserve in the 

 minds of reasonable men, the old fallacy of a discord between 

 theory and practice has been swept away. For centuries that 

 fallacy held apart, as it were, the oxygen and the nitrogen of 

 that atmosphere in which alone the new life could exist. It 

 limited the philosopher who examined the laws of nature almost 

 entirely to the study of phenomena external to the earth on 

 which he dwelt, and it stamped the practical man as a lower 

 being, the possessor of certain necessary knowledge, having no 

 relation to the studies of the schoolmen, and which it would be 

 beneath their dignity to pursue. And notwithstanding the 

 great names which have stood out in opposition to these views, 

 the popular idea of discord between theory and practice took 

 long to die, and only within the Victorian Age has the complete 

 truth been generally recognised, that if one fails to account for 

 the result of any physical combination, the cause is to be found 

 not in any discord with theory, but in the fact that the observer 

 has failed to discover the whole of the theory. 



We English-speaking people, alone, I believe, among civilised 

 nations, use this word, theory, with unpardonable loose- 

 ness — as almost synonymous in effect with hypothesis, and 

 the result is fruitful of error. Until the truth of any hypothesis 



