1 '(A 



NA TURE 



[February 8, 1894 



instead of the word origin, his own other word for the 

 idea in his mind, ' modification ' namely — had his title- 

 page ran 'The Modification of Species by Means of 

 Natural Selection/ I question whether Mr. Murray, with 

 all his experience, would, for each of the thousand copies 

 he did sell, actually have sold ten." (Last page.) 



Poor novelists ! Poor general public ! For thirty- 

 five years you have gone on reading and discussing this 

 book, and helping to make it celebrated, and have only 

 now found one candid and truthful friend to inform you 

 that you have been flagitiously deceived by the title, with- 

 out which you would never have read it, or made any 

 fuss about it, or even have heard of it at all ! 



In order, perhaps, to enforce this conclusion— that it 

 was the word origin that alone attracted readers. Dr. 

 Stirling assures us that Lyell was too old a bird to be 

 caught by such chaff. Huxley, he tells us, is in a state of 

 doubt ; Carpenter and Gray were only half-converted ; 

 Hooker is the only genuine convert ; but — 



" Lyell, from the moment he came properly to know 

 the doctrine, was really, and in point of fact, that doc- 

 trine's absolute opponent." 



It is to be supposed, of course, that Dr. Stirling 

 believes this ; but then what of his knowledge ? In five 

 long chapters of the last edition of the " Principles," 

 Lyell expounds the whole theory in his own calm judicial 

 style, and on every aspect of it pronounces in its favour. 



The passages we have marked in this volume as 

 examples of misconception, misstatement, or ignorance, 

 are so numerous that it is difficult to know where to 

 choose. Here for example is the way the author deals 

 with natural selection, as being neither a law nor a dis- 

 covery. 



" But has there been a discovery ? and actually of a 

 law? We have seen an hypothesis — a gourd, as it were, 

 that came up in a night to be a shadow over the land — 

 but a discovery ? Can what the Pampas suggested, or 

 South America, or the Galapagos — can what the breeders 

 or fanciers suggested, or what Malthus suggested, or 

 what the split-up stock of horses suggested — can either 

 or all of these suggestions be called a discovery ? That 

 the similarities in species (as in the beetles, say) should 

 have struck him, and that he should have then asked. 

 What, if naturally varying in time, and so naturally 

 variously applied, they were all just naturally out of each 

 other? — that is a mere supposition, it is no discovery. 

 Even as a supposition, is it a credible one, unless we 

 remove it, far out of sight, into the dark ? Yes : variations, 

 accidents, we know them well, we see them daily ; but 

 they come and go, they appear and disappear, they are 

 born and they die out — they really do nothing ; and as 

 for forming new creatures, is not that an extraordinarily 

 weighty complication to burden such simple, perishable, 

 transitory accidents with?" (p. 284.) 



Here we have an interrogative show of argument and 

 of superior knowledge on a subject as to which it is quite 

 clear that the writer knows nothing whatever, but hides 

 his ignorance in vague involved words, from which it is 

 impossible to extract any definite meaning. And when 

 he attempts to deal with any definite facts, the ignorance 

 becomes more glaring and the flood of wordy interro- 

 gations more ludicrous. One more quotation to show 

 this, and we have done. He is attempting to deal with 

 the theory of protective colouration, and after a couple 

 NO. I 267, VOL. 49] 



of pages of misconception and interrogation, he thus 

 proceeds : — 



" But, seriously, why are canaries yellow ? Why are 

 larks and starlings spotted ? Why has the robin the red 

 breast that gives him his name? Selection! There is 

 actually no selection. Neither on the part of nature, nor 

 on the part of sex itself, is there the slightest proof of 

 the necessary limit of selection. For selection, in the 

 very idea that constitutes it, means a limit. And limit 

 there is none. Blacks, and whites, and blues, and reds, 

 and greens, and yellows, are to be seen indiscriminately 

 mingled, almost everywhere — blacks, and whites, and 

 reds, and greens, &c., in almost every possible shading — 

 nay, in almost every possible variegation, too ! All that 

 pretty anecdotal rationalising — story-telling — in regard 

 to the leopard, too (the grandfather has it), is it 

 not of the same kind ? There are so many leopards in 

 existence because their spots, confounded with the 

 interstitial light and dark of the jungle, save them. But 

 if that is so, why are there quite as many tigers, 

 animals that are not spotted, but striped? Oh, the 

 ghauts, the ghauts, you cry. Well, yes, the ghauts are 

 defiles ; but how is a stripe like a defile, or how does it 

 come from a defile, or as being like a defile how does it 

 save them ? But admitting that, and saying that leopards 

 are saved by spots, and tigers by stripes, what of the 

 lions ? They can be saved by neither — neither by spots 

 nor by stripes, and they are equally numerous, or sup- 

 posably equally numerous — and snf>posably so is the 

 vernacular of the region — why is there no call for either 

 spots or stripes in their case? Or, after all, just as it is, 

 spotless, stnpeless, is not the lion quite as likely to escape 

 detection in the jungle as either of the others, let it be 

 leopard, let it be tiger ? " 



How clever is the jingle of words and interrogatives, 

 yet how crammed with blunders and how devoid of sense I 

 The writer evidently thinks that Darwin, or some 

 authoritative writer on Darwinism, has stated that the 

 tigers' stripes imitate the defiles in which they live, which 

 defiles are the "ghauts"! He also is of opinion that 

 jeopards, tigers, and lions, all live together in the same 

 " jungles," all have the same habits, and therefore all re- 

 quire the same protective colouring. But they are not 

 coloured alike ; therefore their colouring is not pro- 

 tective ! That is a sample of Dr. Stirling's knowledge 

 and of Dr. Stirling's argument. 



Readers of Nature may think that too much space has 

 been given to so contemptible and worthless a book ; but 

 it must be remembered that the author has a considerable 

 reputation in philosophy and literature, has published 

 over a dozen works of more or less importance, and was 

 the first Gifford Lecturer at Edinburgh University in 

 1888-90. It is certain that many purely literary critics, 

 as ignorant of biology as is the author, will declare the 

 work to be an important adverse critique of Darwin and 

 Darwinism. If it were the work of an unknown man, 

 it would, so far as its matter is concerned, be beneath 

 contempt. But when a writer of established reputation 

 goes out of his way to discuss a subject of which he shows 

 himself to be grossly ignorant, and puts forth all his 

 literary skill to depreciate the mental power and the life- 

 work of one of the greatest men of science of the century, 

 it is necessary and right that, in the pages of one scien- 

 tific journal at least, the ignorance, the fatuity, and the 

 carping littleness of the whole performance should be 

 fully and unflinchingly exposed. 



Alfred R. Wall.\ce. 



