188 REV. JOHN GERARD, F.L.S., ON SPECIES AND THEIR ORIGIN. 
methods of natural selection, and I believe that the views that have 
long been held respecting “the extinction of vast multitudes of 
nearer relatives,” referred to on p. 130, have recently been consider- 
ably modified, and that it is now largely held that sports or sudden 
abrupt large variations are the real causes of permanent variations. 
Modern Mendelism has made a further analysis, the varying com- 
ponents account for variations in the germ cell, just as electrons 
have modified our ideas about molecules. 
All members of this Institute must, as Christians, thoroughly 
endorse the conclusions so ably driven home by the lecturer, that 
the word mind is the least inadequate word that we can apply to 
the Infinite Cause of the Universe and its operations, and dim as is 
our comprehension, yet the fortuitous concourse of atoms theory is 
quite irrational. 
Mr. ARTHUR W. Surron, F.L.S8., expressed the very great 
pleasure with which he had listened to the lecturer’s able and sug- 
gestive paper, and alluded to the fact that those whose lives were 
spent in the more practical branches of horticulture were impressed 
with two outstanding facts:—On the one hand the wonderful 
possibilities, by means of selection and cross-fertilisation, of the 
improvement of the plants of the garden and farm, and on the other 
hand, the limitations imposed by nature which raised barriers 
beyond which it was impossible to go. 
Mr. Sutton mentioned that, from his experience, he supposed that 
there was no body of men who, taken as a class, were more pro- 
foundly conscious of a supreme or supernatural Power or Being who 
controlled the course of nature than gardeners. Extraordinary as 
the results obtained by gardeners undoubtedly were, they were 
constantly reminded that their success would be impossible were it 
not for the inherent potentialities with which their plants, trees, ete., 
were endowed, and although nature allowed her servants to extend 
the usefulness or increase the beauty of a plant, it was only on lines 
and in directions peculiar to the individuals under treatment, and 
that by no possible means could a gardener induce one plant to 
assume the specific characteristics of another. 
Mr. Sutton remarked that it was contended by some that 
different species could not interbreed and produce fertile offspring, 
while others contended that certain species did so; this difference 
-of opinion Mr. Sutton attributed to the fact that some included as 
