292 DARWINISM TO-DAY. 



sciatic nerve. The 'epileptiform habit' does not appear in the animal 

 until some time after the operation; it lasts for some weeks or 

 months, and then disappears. The attacks are not brought on spon- 

 taneously, but by 'irritating a small area of the skin behind the 

 ear on the same side of the body as that on which the sciatic nerve 

 had been divided.' The attack lasts for only a few minutes, and 

 during it the animal is convulsed and unconscious. Romanes thinks 

 that the injury to the sciatic nerve, or to the spinal cord, produces 

 some sort of a change in the cerebral centres, 'and that it is this 

 change whatever it is, and in whatever part of the brain it takes 

 place which causes the remarkable phenomena in question.' 



"In regard to Brown-Sequard's statements, made in the 3d and 

 the 4th paragraphs, in respect to the results of the operation of 

 cutting the cervical sympathetic, Romanes had not confirmed the 

 results when his manuscript went to press ; but soon afterward, 

 after Romanes' death, a note was printed in Nature, by Dr. Hill, 

 announcing that two guinea-pigs from Romanes' experiment had 

 been born, 'both of which exhibited a well-marked droop of the 

 upper eyelid. These guinea-pigs were the offspring of a male and 

 fermle in both of which I had produced for Dr. Romanes, some 

 months earlier, a droop of the left upper eyelid by division of the left 

 cervical sympathetic nerve. This result is a corroboration of the 

 series of Brown-Sequard experiments on the inheritance of acquired 

 characters.' 



"Romanes states that he also found that injury to a particular 

 spot Of the restiform bodies is quickly followed by a protrusion 

 of the eye on the same side, and further, that he had 'also had 

 many cases in which some of the progeny of parents thus affected 

 have shown considerable protrusion of the eyeballs of both sides, 

 and this seemingly abnormal protrusion has occasionally been 

 transmitted to the next generation. Nevertheless, I am far from 

 satisfied that this latter fact is anything more than an accidental 

 coincidence.' This reservation is made on the ground that the 

 protrusion in the young is never so great as in the parents, and 

 also because there is amongst guinea-pigs a considerable amount 

 of individual variation in the degree of prominence of the eye- 

 balls. Romanes, while unwilling to deny that an 'obviously abnor- 

 mal amount of protrusion, due to the operation, may be inherited 

 in lesser degree,' is also unwilling to affirm so important a conclu- 

 sion on the basis of these experiments alone. 



''In regard to Brown-Sequard's 6th statement, Romanes found 

 after injury to the restiform body that haematoma and dry gan- 

 grene may supervene, either several weeks after the operation, or 

 at any subsequent time, even many months afterward. The disease 



