METHOD OF PROOF 37 



will hardly refuse a polite request to examine the minute hairs 

 clothing their trunks and limbs. One has to pursue a certain 

 amount of that study which may be called the sister of plant- 

 ecology, that is, animal-ecology or the behaviour of animals at 

 home. The student of these matters, it may be freely admitted, 

 will complain, unless he has some hypothesis or line of thought to 

 follow, that he has been set down in a valley in which the bones are 

 very many and very dry. But, armed or primed with an hypothesis, 

 he may find an affirmative answer to his question " Can these 

 bones live ? ' Every group of natural phenomena, without excep- 

 tion, has some meaning for those who will interpret nature rather 

 than bully and slight her, and whatever anointed king may claim 

 sovereigntjr over it the humble fact cannot be denied that " whatever 

 phenomenon is, is." 1 Again I would refer to Howes' inspiring 

 note : ' We live by ideas ; we advance by a knowledge of the 

 facts ; content to discover the meaning of phenomena, since the 

 nature of things will be for ever beyond our grasp." 2 The facts 

 adduced are simple, have a chance of recurring and are widely 

 distributed among multicellular animals — the botanists and plants 

 can very well take care of themselves. I must once more state that 

 I am attaching to the considered facts a value of a somewhat 

 unusual kind — their intrinsic unimportance. For anyone who has 

 had to encounter the skilful dialectics and counter-attacks of a 

 well-equipped neo-Darwinian it is well that he should remember 

 the maxim of Napoleon, " Be vulnerable nowhere." It is necessary 

 to show evidence for Lamarckian factors in which no degree of 

 selective value, survival -value, can be seen by hostile sharp-shooter 

 while he works in his trench. The main line of defence, or more 

 correctly what Hindenburg would call " offensive-defence," is 

 therefore made to rest on the phenomena of hair-direction, which, 

 I submit, are impregnable to the forces of selection, probably in all 

 the hairy mammals, but certainly in that hairy animal called Man. 



Thesis. 



If these groups of phenomena were being studied apart from 

 the hypothesis they support, a much more full treatment of all of 

 them would be required, such as I have given to those of hair- 

 direction in a book published in 1 903 on Direction of Hair in Animals 

 and Man. The limited thesis, however, here upheld is that the 

 phenomena are produced by the factors of stimuli and response in 



1 Jevons. 



2 British Association of Science 1902. Zoological Section. 



