548 



NATURE 



\ April lo, i! 



Wlien I last wrote I had satisfied myself that he had learnt to 

 regard the bringing of a card as a. request, and that he could 

 distinguish a card with the word " food" on it from a plain one, 

 while I believed that he could distinguish between a card with 

 "food "on it, and one with "out" on it. I have no doubt 

 that he can distinguish between different words. For instance, 

 when he is hungry he will bring a " food" card time after time 

 until he has had enough, and then he lies down quietly for a nap. 

 Again, when I am going for a walk and invite him to come, he 

 gladly responds Ijy picking up the " out " card and running 

 triumphantly with it before me to the front door. In thfe same 

 way he knows the "bone" card quite well. As regards water 

 (which I spell phonetically so as not to confuse him unneces- 

 sarily), I keej) a card always on the floor in my dressing-room, 

 and whenever he is thirsty he goes off there, without any sugges- 

 tion from me, and brings the card with perfect gravity. At tlie 

 same time he is fond of a game, and if he is playful or excited 

 will occasionally run about with any card. If through inad- 

 vertence he brings a card for something he does not want, when 

 tlie corresponding object is shown him he seizes the card, takes 

 it back again, and fetches the right one. 



No one who has seen him look along a row of cards and select 

 the right one can, I think, doubt that in bringing a card he feels 

 that he is making a request, and that he can not only perfectly 

 distinguish between one word and another, but also associate 

 the word and the object. 



I do not for a moment say that "Van" thus shows more intelli- 

 gence than has been recorded in the case of other dogs ; that is not 

 ray point, but it does seem to me that this method of instruction 

 opens out a means by which dogs and other animals may lie 

 enabled to communicate with us more satisfactorily than hitherto. 



I am still continuing my observations, and am now considering 

 the best mode of testing him in very simple arithmetic, but I 

 wish I could induce others to cooperate, for I feel satisfied that 

 the system would well repay more time and attention than I am 

 myself able to give. John Lubbock 



High Elms, Down, Kent 



"The Unity of Nature" 



I REGRET that the Duke of Argyll should have been led by 

 anything that I have written to make some of the remarks which 

 appear in this week's issue of Nature (p. 524). If a reviewer 

 in a signed review cannot express freely his opinion upon a book 

 without its being suggested that he is actuated by secondary and 

 sinister motives, I fancy that few men of common honesty would 

 care to continue the work of reviewing. Moreover, in the present 

 instance the imputation of animus seems to me specially unjusti- 

 fiable. I had almost forgotten the correspondence in Nature 

 to which the Duke alludes, but on now referring to it again I 

 can only see that, if it was provocative of animus, there was 

 assuredly no reason for the animus to have ari en on my side 

 (see Nature, vol. xxiv. pp. 5S1 and 604 ; vol. xxv. pp. 6 and 

 29). But, to ignore so unworthy a charge, and one which I can 

 only suppose to have been made under a sense of irritation, I 

 must explain that the Duke is under a wrong impression when 

 he assumes that my objectio-i to his advocacy of Theistic belief is 

 due to what he regards as my aversion to Theism. As I have 

 never been in the habit of " nsing your columns for the purpose 

 of inculc.iting persinal beliefs and disbeliefs on subjects which 

 lie outside the boundaries of physical science," I shall not do ?o 

 now. But in view of the slender grounds on which the Duke 

 has felt himself entitled to infer that I "hold that the highest 

 aim of the human intellect is to prove the mindlessness of nature," 

 I feel it is desirable to correct the inference. For this purpose 

 it is not needful that I should publish my " personal beliefs and 

 disbeliefs." It is only needful to say that my previous remarks 

 will be found to have been directed, not against the cause of 

 Theism, but against its champion in the Duke of Argyll. Had 

 my sympathies been more on the side of the materialists than 

 they happen to be, the Duke of Argyll might not have found so 

 much reason to quarrel with my "dislike" of his advocacy. 



I may now turn to the Duke's remarks on those of my 

 criticisms which he deems legitimate. Taking first the case of 

 rudimentary organs, I quite agree with the statement that the 

 question whether any particular structure now dissociated from 

 use is to be regarded as "on the stocks or on the wane" is "a 

 question of evidence f ro n associated fact*." Therefore it was 

 that I .said in my review that ni illustration could be more 

 •.nfortunale than the one which n\ as chosen by the Duke as an 



example of rudimentary structures possibly on the stocks. For 

 if the rudimentary organs uhich occur in the Cetacea admit of 

 being ,suppo.sed of doubtful interpretation in this matter, it is 

 clear that in no case could the "evidence from associated facts" 

 of structure and affinity be of any value. But in reality this 

 evidence is nearly always so cogent that the difficulty suggested 

 liy the Duke is of a purely imaginary kind : evolutionists have 

 no need ever to be puzzlerl in deciding whether a given struc- 

 tare is on the stocks or on the wane. Thu-, for instance, let 

 us take the cases which are adduced by the Duke himself. 

 No evolutionist could be insane enough to imagine that the 

 papilla: on the roof of the mouth of the giraffe are the remnants 

 of whalebone, seeing that the whole structure and all the affini- 

 ties of the animal are oppo?ed to the inference that its ancestors 

 were aquatic mammalia. Or, if we take the case of webbed 

 fee', even if the dipper had begun to develop them, no evolu- 

 tionist in his senses would infer that these incipient structures 

 were remnants of structures once more fully developed, seeing 

 that all the other struc'ures and affinities of the bird prove that it 

 belongs to a non-aquatic family. Cases of this kind actually 

 occur in such birds as the grebe and the coot, where even 

 apart from structure and affinity it is easy to see that the little 

 piece of web must be regarded as a growing and not a 

 dwindling organ, seeing that the birds are so strongly aquatic 

 in their habits. 



Considering next the Duke's remarks on instinct, I did not 

 attempt to deal with the argument to which he refers, because I 

 could not perceive that there was any argument to be dealt with. 

 His view is a mere assumption to the effect that instincts are 

 divinely implanted intuitions independent of experience ; and to 

 deny that experience, in successive generations^ is the source of 

 instinct is not to meet, by way of argument, the enormous mass 

 of evidence which goes to prove that such is the case. Even 

 within the limits of my review I should have thought there was 

 evidence enough to have disposed of this denial. 



As for ihe special case of the dipper, I only mentioned it in 

 my review because the Duke lays great stre-s upon it in his 

 book. No doubt better cases occur of newly-acquired instincts 

 not yet associated with correlated structures, and in all such 

 cases (whether good, bad, or indifferent), it is not a non sequilur 

 mode of argument to say that, on the theory of the transmutation 

 of instincts the appropriate organs have not been developed, 

 because, lo )king to the affinities of the animal, we are entitled 

 to infer that time enough has not yet been allowed for their 

 development. Again, I deny that it is for me, or for any other 

 evolutionist, to prove that the ancestors of the dipper did not 

 present those lesser modifications of structure which, according 

 to the Duke, are now correlated with the aquatic instincts.' By 

 " proof" he no doubt means the display of the ancestral form, 

 and not the study of allied species. Proof of this kind is not 

 .attainable, but neither is it required. The question whether 

 instincts are fixed intuitions or admit of being modified by 

 accumulative experience with natural selection — i.e. whether they 

 are or are not subject to evolution — is a question that does not 

 require to be settled on the narrow basis of any one particular 

 case. And if we take a broad view of all the instincts known to 

 us, the combined weight of their testimony to the fact of trans- 

 mutation is simply overwhelming. 



London, April 4 George J. Romanes 



The Remarkable Sunsets 



The remarkable red sunsets and after-glows, about which so 

 much has been written of late, still continue here, but in a less 

 intense form. A remarkable one occurred last night, and while 

 watching it I determined to send you a brief account of my 

 experiences in the matter. It is of little use going into descrip- 

 tions of the appearances which are now well known, but the one 

 which occurred last evening was unusually fine. It was a 

 stormy wild evening, with black clouds all around, except in the 

 west, where, from about 10° above the horizon to near the zenith, 

 it was quite clear, and of a pale orange glow. A quarter of an 

 hour after sunset three immense rays through rifts in the cloud 

 bank sprang up almost suddenly, and took quite an intense 

 crimson lake colour, wdiich lasted about ten minutes. 



Our brightest displays occurred in October and November 

 last, and frequently bathed the whole landscape in a deep 



* I say ''according lo the Duke," becnu^e, according to Mr. Darwin, 

 '' in the crse of the w.-ilt r-ouzel the acutest observer, by examining its dca I 

 body, would never ha\e iuspected its Euh-aquatic habits" ("Origin of 

 Species," 6th ed., p, 142), 



