On Reproduction of Lost Parts and Abnormality. 363 



XXVIII. On Reprodiiction of Lost Parts and Ahnormality. 

 By Professor Duns, D.D., F.R.S.R, President. 



(Read 15tli April 1885.) 



We are as yet far short of data sufficient to warrant a 

 philosophy of zoology within which to find a fit place for the 

 forms referred to in the title. But there are abundant 

 materials ever at hand for the exercise of the philosophic 

 spirit, in showing that this branch of science is far more than 

 a technical representation of parts and their dependencies — 

 more than mere scientia rerum. It is the " scientia rerum 

 cum caiisis" a favourite dictum of the old workers in another 

 department. Among the good things of Darwinism is the 

 prominence it gives to the thoughts which underlie things, 

 and the conviction it works in those who read it rightly, that 

 this thought is as real as the things, and both as real as the 

 thinker. Thus inferences are as reliable as the data which 

 warrant them, and both are equally abiding. We all feel 

 the temptation to be satisfied with phenomena, but, in the 

 measure in which we yield, we fall short of our work, and 

 become biological hodmen, handling the parts of which the 

 house of life is built, but discerning not purpose or prevision 

 of any sort in protozoan or in mammal which it is to lodge. 

 Yet the purpose is as real and true, I had almost said, sub- 

 stantial, as the albumenoid mass of the one, or the compli- 

 cated organs, inter-dependencies of organs, and their parts, of 

 the other. It would be an insult to the botanist to say that the 

 only difference between his estimate of a primrose and that 

 of " Peter Bell," is, that while to the latter it " a yellow prim- 

 rose was to him and nothing more," to the former it was 

 Primula vulga.ris, or perhaps P. vulgaris, varietas acaulis ! 

 It is, however, possible to fail to recognise, and to make 

 nothing of the persistent working towards individualism of 

 that one life-force which, while preserving unity, finds room 

 within it for untold variety, and which gives root and leaf 

 and flower and colour, and utilises air and sunlight, dew and 

 rain, cold and heat. 



I make these general remarks chiefly to indicate that it is 



