January 19. 1899] 



NA TURE 



269 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 [Tlu- Elitor does not hold himself responsible for opinions e.r- 

 frcssei by his correspondents Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of rejected 

 tmniiscyipts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. 

 y\'' notice is taken of anonymous communii.ations.l 



The Duke of Argyll and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 



Hai> I read Mr. Spencer's reply to the Duke of Argyll in 

 iSS8, I should have been even more astonished than the writer 

 of the '• Counter Criticism," that the Duke should have 

 sanctioned the publication of his essays in their present form 

 without a word of warning to his readers, that Mr. Spencer had 

 not only not sanctioned but had explicitly denied the interpret- 

 ation which the Duke had forced upon his analysis of the term 

 " survival of the fittest." Any person would conclude from the 

 first essay that Mr. Spencer had altogether abandoned this term, 

 and (by implication) the factor of organic evolution e.xpressed by 

 it. I am sure that biologists will be generally glad to have it 

 again authoritatively from Mr. Spencer hiinself that he is still so 

 far Darw'inian. He will also bear with me, I hope, when I point 

 out that the mass of literature which the working man of science 

 has to digest at the present time is so great that very few have 

 time to seek light in the pages of the current magazines. 

 Certainly we do not turn to these publications as a rule for 

 information on scientific questions, and, I am bound to add, 

 that the principles which determine the selection of writers on 

 scientific subjects for such magazines have always appeared to 

 me to be a profound mystery. It is not mere flattery when I 

 state that we are in the habit of regarding Mr. .Spencer's 

 magazine contributions in the light of *' ])reliminary notices," 

 and that we always look forward to having thein in a collected 

 form at some later period. 



With respect to the apparent change of attitude on the 

 question of the relative importance of direct and indirect 

 equilibration, I can, of course, only accept Mr. Spencer's e.tplan- 

 ation that the great prominence into which he has of late years 

 brought the first of these factors, has led biologists in this 

 country to suppose that he attaches more weight to it than he 

 did formerly. It may be also that since the admissibility of 

 this factor has been seriously questioned by those who accept 

 the views of Prichard, (iaiton and Weismann, the attitude of 

 each party has become unconsciously stiffened towards the 

 other. In the passages from his *' Principles of Biology," 

 referred to by Mr. .Spencer in his letter (which passages I had 

 by no means forgotten), it is made perfectly clear that even at 

 the time of writing that work he went beyond Darwin in the 

 part assigned to direct equilibration. In his " Factors of 

 Organic Evolution," published in 1886 in the Nineteenth 

 Century, and collectively in 1SS7, Mr. Spencer certainly pro- 

 duces the impression that he is inclined to go still further in 

 this direction : — 



"Was the share in organic evolution which Mr. Daruin 

 latterly a.ssigned to the transmission of modifications caused by 

 use and disuse, its due share? Consideration of the groups of 

 evidences given above will, I think, lead us to believe that its 

 share has been much larger than he supposed even in his later 

 days" (p. -^i) 



" But the fact we have to note is that while Mr. Darwin thus 

 took account of special effects due to special amounts and com- 

 binations of agencies in the environment, he did not lake 

 account of the far more important effects due to the general 

 and constant operation of these agencies" (p. 46). 



" But gradually with that increase of activity which we see on 

 ascending to successively higher grades of animals, and especially 

 with that increased coinplexity of life which we also see, there 

 came more and more into play as a factor, the inheritance of 

 those modifications of structure caused by modifications of 

 function. Eventually, among creatures of high organisation, 

 this factor became an important one : and I think there is reason 

 to conclude that, in the case of the highest of creatures, civilised 

 men, among whom the kinds of variation which affect survival 

 are too multitudinous to permit easy selection of any one, and 

 among whom survival of the fittest is greatly interfered with, it 

 has become the chief factor : such aid as survival of the fittest 

 gives, being usually limited to the preservation of those in 

 whom the totality of the faculties has been most favourably 

 rr.oulded by functional changes" (p. 74). 



I have not the least desire to raise once again the whole ques- 



NO. 1525, VOL. 59] 



tion as to whether " direct equilibration '' plays any part at all 

 in the development of species, but such passages as those above 

 quoted, and generally the whole tendency to exalt this factor in 

 the essays from which they are quoted, has produced a very 

 widespread notion that Mr. Spencer has diverged more widely 

 from Darwin now than he did in 1864. Personally I can only ex- 

 press satisfaction that Mr. Spencer has himself disillusionised us. 

 January 13. R. M11I.DOI.A. 



The late Prof. George James Allman, as a Botanist. 



I.N the notice of my distinguished namesake and friend — the 

 late George James Allman — which appeared in Nature of 

 December 29, 1S98, it is stated : 



" Allman's first paper was a botanical one, 'On the Mathe- 

 matical Relations of Forms of Cells of Plants,' and it is worthy 

 of note that in this he in a sense anticipated one of the most 

 recent among our biological departures." 



This is not so. I .send you herewith a copy of an " Abstract 

 of a Memoir on the Mathematical Connection between the Parts 

 of Vegetables," by William .\llman, M.D., who was Professor 

 of Botany in the University of Dublin, 1S09-1844, and the prede- 

 cessor of the late George James Allman in the chair. The memoir 

 is plainly the paper referred to above, and was read before the 

 Royal Society in the year 181 1. George J. Allman. 



St. Mary's, Gal way, January 2. 



The paragraph in my obituary notice of the late George 

 James Allman, cited by Prof George Johnston Allman, was in- 

 tended to refer to a paper read before the British Association in 

 1835, entitled ''On the Mathematical Relations of the Forms of 

 the Cells of Plants," which heads the list of works .ascribed in the 

 Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers to George James 

 Allman, and not to that by William Allman mentioned in the 

 accompanying letter by his .son, of which at the time of writing I 

 was ignorant. While collecting data for my necrology of George 

 James Allman, my suspicions were aroused by the fact that in 

 the original form the paper alluded to by me is attributed but to 

 a " Dr. Allman " ; assuming, however, that the Royal Society's 

 Cataloguer must have had authority for definitely associating it 

 with George James Allman, I did not inquire further. In 

 consideration of the point now raised, the matter becomes 

 further complicated by the fact that the President of the Linnean 

 Society, in making the award of the Society's Gold Medal to the 

 late George James Allman in 1896, was, at my instigation, led 

 to refer (Proc. Linn. Soc, 1895-1896, p. 30) to the same 

 paper in terms apposite to those of my obituary notice now 

 under discussion. The memoir by William Allman, referred to 

 by Prof George Johnston Allman, is preserved in the Depart- 

 ment of Botany, British Museum, together with a copy of an ab- 

 stract of the same printed privately in 1844, as has been pointed 

 out by my colleague at the Linnean Society, Mr. B. Daydon 

 Jackson, in his article " William Allman" in the Dictionary of 

 National Biography, on Prof Allman's own authority, and by 

 Prof Percival Wright in his " Notes from the Botanical School 

 in Trinity College, Dublin" (No. i, p. 3); (cf also Messrs. 

 Britten and Boulger's " Index of British and Irish Botanists," 

 p. 3). And on inspection, I find them accompanied by a letter 

 to Robert Brown, dated 1844, which seems to show that the 

 abstract vvas printed at his suggestion, apropos of an application 

 by W. Allman for an appointment for which testimonials were 

 being sought. MS. and abstract, and the paper to which I 

 alluded, ho.vever, though cognate, are unquestionably distinct ; 

 and, on making further inquiry since the receipt of Prof. All- 

 man's letter, I have been interested to find in the Britfsh 

 Association's Index for the years 1S31-1860 yet another of a 

 similar character, recorded (but in title only) under the name of 

 George James Allman. Mr. Griffith, the Secretary of the 

 British Association, has very generously aided me by looking up 

 the original records in his possession, and other reports and pub- 

 lications likely to bear on the question ; and he informs me 

 that he has no doubt whatever that the series of papers under 

 discussion were by William .oilman, pointing out that the 

 paper regarding which I was misled by the Royal Society's 

 Catalogue and British .\ssuciation's Report is rightly attributed 

 to him, on authority, in Poggendorff's " Handworterbuch. " 

 Further considera'ion of the dates of events in the lives of the 

 two Allmans fully bears this conclusion out. The series of papers 

 were clearly expressive of successive phases in a long-cherished 

 idea revolving in its author's mind for a period of nearly forty 



