Nov. 10, 1870] 
NATURE 
33 

hot countries to protect them from the heat of the sun. It is 
impossible to conccive, therefore, that this absence of covering 
was ever directly Leneficial to the race or the individual ; and 
hence it cannot have been produced by the operation of natural 
selection ; but must have been in some way connected with those 
reasoning powers which lead to the construction of clothing and 
dwellings on which his civilisation so largely depends. Mr, Wal- 
lace, however, appears to forget that he had previously stated 
his conclusion that ‘‘ those great modifications of structure and 
of external form which resulted in the development of man out 
of some lower type of animal, must have occurred defore his 
intellect had raised him above the condition of the brutes.”* 
This principle, therefore, whatever it may be, other than natural 
selection, which produced man’s bare back, must have been in 
operation before the intellect of man was developed. This 
strange inconsistency of Mr. Wallace’s appears to result from 
the fact that he is unable to shut his eyes to the inevitable con- 
clusion that the development of man from the ape, and the 
production of the different races of mankind, have not resulted 
from the operation of natural selection, pure and simple, but 
that this principle has been powerfully assisted by man’s reasoning 
faculties. This reasoning seems to me perfectly sound and inevi- 
table, admitting, for the sake of argument, Mr. Wallace’s 
hypothesis, that man 7s descended from the apes ; but, if we 
consistently believe in the action of general laws which govern 
the whole of animated nature, we must carry the argument back 
astep further. Reason is but a higher development of instinct. 
If man’s reason has assisted him so to modify his body as to 
adapt himself to the circumstances with which he is surrounded, 
we are unable to bring forward any valid argument why the 
instinct of animals should not also assist them to modify their 
bodies, by slow and gradual degrees, so as to adapt them to the 
circumstances with which they are surrounded. 
In the essay alluded to above, M. Claparéde, himself one of 
the few genuine Darwinians among French writers, points out 
the dangerous and unscientific manner in which the theory of 
natural selection is made, in the hands of its too zezlous advo- 
cates, to explain phenomena which are probably due to other 
causes. Thediscovery of this law marked an era in the history 
of natural science, and gave a wonderful impulse to original re- 
search. Tie danger now is that the law will be pressed into 
services which have no claim upon it ; and that, in the hands of 
injudicious partisans, it will become a hindrance rather than an 
aid to science, by closing the door against further investigations 
in:o other laws which lie behind it. To claim for Natural Selec- 
tion the main agency in the creation of the countiess forms of 
organic life with which we are surrounded, is straining it beyond 
its strength. An era of equal importance will be marked by the 
discovery of the law which regulates the tendency to variation 
which must necessarily underlie natural selection, 
The argument of ‘‘ design” was undoubtedly pushed by pre- 
Darwinian writers to too great an extent. The most recent 
phase of Darwinianism, however, is a complete denial of the exist- 
ence of design in Nature. It is the carrying into Natural Science 
of the Hobbesian principle of Self-love. Every individual and 
every species exists for its own advantage only, and has no 
raison détre except its own welfare. To my mind the beatties 
and wonders of Nature seem, on the other hand, to teach a dif- 
ferent lesson, that, 
All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul ; 
that there are laws, albeit almost unknown to us—not laws merely 
of external circumstance, but laws of internal growth and struc- 
ture,—which actively modify each individual organism, not only 
for its own advantage in the struggle for life, but for the higher 
end of subordinating every individual existence to the good of the 
whole. . 
ALFRED W. BENNETT 


THE PROFESSORSHIP OF NATURAL HIS- 
TORY, QUEEN’S COLLEGE, BELFAST 
N a late number we announced that Professor Wyville 
Thomson, of the Queen’s College, Belfust, had been 
appointed by the Crown to the Professorship of Natural 
History in the University of Edinburgh. This will 
* “ Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection,” p. 319. 

| we believe, no Government would do. 


necessitate the resignation by Professor Thomson of his 
chiir in the Queen’s College, Belfast, a resignation which 
we may presume will be made before the commencement of 
the next term, and a resignation in which some of cur 
readers and many of our men of science will take an 
interest, for the places of honour or emolument open to the 
student of Natural Science in this country are so very few, 
that there is naturally much excitement when one of the few 
isto befilledup. Already we hear of a whole host of young 
and meritorious workers setting their faces towards the 
city that boasts to be the Athens of the North of Ireland. 
The mere mention of the names of Dr. Cunningham, 
who in the Straits of Magellan earned his Natural Science 
spurs so well, of Mr. E. Ray Lankester, whose numerous 
papers show an intimate acquaintance with zoology, of 
Dr. Macalister, whose comparative anatomy memoirs 
are so well-known, or of Dr. Traquair, whose papers on 
fossil fish and on the skull of recent Pleuronectidz. are 
of high merit, not to name others, will show that the post 
of Professor of Natural History in the Queen’s College, 
Belfast, will be contested for by a little army of well-edu- 
cated and accomplished gentlemen, the selection of any 
one of whom would reflect credit on the College. 
But a rumour reaches us that there may be no election 
to the Professorship after all—that the spirit of economy is 
to annihilate the spirit of competition ; that, in order that 
the Government of this great country may save certain 
paltry trifling possibilities of pension, it is their inten- 
tion to translate to Belfast one of the four Profes- 
sors of Natural Science in the Queen’s Colleges of Cork 
and Galway. It is necessary to explain how this can 
be done. Each of the Queen’s Colleges had originally 
a Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, and a Pro- 
fessor of Zoology and Botany. Their income was that of 
a junior assistant in the British Museum, and for common 
decency’s sake, it was found necessary to raise it ; this was 
done on the condition that each of the Professors under- 
took to lecture on the subjects at the time lectured on by 
his colleague, on the death or resignation of that colleague, 
without further increase of pay. So when Prof. Dickie, 
who was Professor of Botany and Zoology in the Queen’s 
College, Belfast, resigned, on his removal to Aberdeen, 
Prof. Thomson had to lecture in zoology and botany, in 
addition to his own subjects of geology and mineralogy, 
Thus it happens that should the Government confer the 
vacant Belfast chair on one of the four existing Professors 
of Natural Science in the other two Queen’s Colleges, 
his post in the college which he leaves will be filled 
up by his colleague, and the Crown will have to deal 
in the matter of pension, &c., with but four persons 
instead of with five, as they will have if they appoint a 
candidate who is not one of these four Professors to the 
vacant post. Nor can the Crown confer this Professor- 
ship on one of the present Professors, and then fill up the 
place thus left vacant by a new appointment, because, 
although the yearly salary of the colleague of the Pro- 
fessor thus elected will not be increased thereby, yet his 
fees, to a slight extent, will ; and so, to break the bargain 
made, would be to the detriment of the individual—a thing, 
But why, we ask, 
should they, for a paltry saving, do detriment to the cause 
cf Science in this country—courted when she is needed— 
kept at more than arm’s length when it is imagined she 
may be done without? Science is but badly cared for in 
our country, and we here allude to the above facts for the 
purpose ot urging those to whose care titis appoint- 
ment fails, to forget, for the once, all cons:derat ons 
except those for the good of the Colige, and to quicken 
the already expanding lie of the Qu-en’s University in 
Ireland by the infusion of fresh bood into this one 0} 
its Colleges. 
It is in the interest of Science that we write, not in the 
interest of candidates, one of whose names we would not 
mention above another. 
