48 DR. HILL, PROM REFLEX ACTION TO VOLITION. 



discretion. The whole of the vast subject of the nervous system 

 lie has dealt with in this short paper. He has taken it from a 

 low form of life beginning with the Medusa, but he might have 

 gone even lower, for though in them you find no threads or 

 filaments to indicate a nervous system, there is other evidence of 

 its existence. Dr. Romanes and Dr. Hill himself have shown that 

 first demonstrable evidence of a nervous system. From that rudi- 

 mentary condition in the lowest organised creature you progress to 

 the brain that wrote the plays of Shakespeare, or that discovered 

 the laws of gravitation. There is remarkable continuity and 

 evolution. As to the brain, if you put a jelly fish at one end and 

 Sir Isaac Newton at the other, the transition is gradual from the 

 one standard of intelligence to the other. 



There is much in the paper that is very interesting, and, as the 

 President has said, very suggestive ; and where the author speaks 

 of heredity I am very much struck with the value of his remarks. 

 I cannot conceive how any one could have advanced the theory 

 that these things are not hereditary ; that they are so transmitted 

 there can be little doubt. I was in the north of Scotland shooting, 

 and in the course of my walks found a dead grouse lying under 

 the telegraph wires, and drew the keeper's attention to it: in the 

 course of conversation he said : " Where we used to get ten of 

 these dead birds, we now get one." I asked him why that was, 

 and he said : " They have got to know it — the knowledge seems 

 to have been transmitted to them. Formerly they used to fly 

 against the wires and kill themselves, while now they avoid 

 them." 



The author has spoken of the origin of sensation, and has re- 

 ferred to the otter, the seal, the whale, and so on, the latter 

 being destitute, I believe, of smell, and what would be the use of 

 it ? The creature keeps its head under water, and the sense of 

 smell is not transmitted through the water — but the dog has 

 large organs of smell — his mission seems to be perpetually in an 

 atmosphere of it. If you watch a sky-terrier, or other dog, his 

 whole time is occupied in the pursuit of his sense of smell. 

 All this is very interesting, but Dr. Hill has not spoken of any- 

 thing that we do not share in common (though we have it in a 

 higher degree) with our lower neighbours. 



He has not gone into the psychical aspect of the matter. I 

 think if he were to do so it would be interesting, but I quite 



