24 MUSEUM ORGANISATION i 



problems which still remain as to the methods by which the 

 changes have been brought about. 



Ever since the publication of what has been truly 

 described as the " creation of modern natural history," Darwin's 

 work on the Origin of Species, there has been no little 

 controversy as to how far all the modifications of living forms 

 can be accounted for by the principle of natural selection or 

 preservation of variations best adapted for their surrounding 

 conditions, or whether any, and if so what, other factors have 

 taken part in the process of organic evolution. 



It certainly cannot be said that in these later times the 

 controversy has ended. Indeed those who are acquainted with 

 scientific literature must know that notes struck at the last 

 annual meeting of this Association produced a series of 

 reverberations the echoes of which have hardly yet died away. 



Within the last few months also two important works have 

 appeared in our country, which have placed in an accessible 

 and popular form many of the data upon which the most 

 prevalent views on the subject are based. 



The first is Darwinism : an Exposition of the Theory of 

 Natural Selection, with some of its Applications, by Alfred Russel 

 Wallace. No one could be found so competent to give such 

 an exposition of the theory as one who was, simultaneously 

 with Darwin, its independent originator, but who, by the 

 title he has chosen, no less than by the contents of the book, 

 has, with rare modesty and self-abnegation, transferred to 

 his fellow -labourer all the merit of the discovery of what 

 he evidently looks upon as a principle of overwhelming 

 importance in the economy of nature ; " supreme," indeed, he 

 says, " to an extent which even Darwin himself hesitated to 

 claim for it." 



The other work I refer to is the English translation of the 

 remarkable Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological 

 Problems, by Dr. August Weismann, published at the Oxford 

 Clarendon Press, in which is fully discussed the very important 

 but still open question a question which was brought into 

 prominence at our meeting at Manchester two years ago of 

 the transmission or non- transmission to the offspring of 

 characters acquired during the lifetime of the parent. 



