BOTANICAL SUBJECTS. 49 



destruction by changes of a conspicuous kind, and these it is 

 unable to produce. 



" And just as the traveller, in the course of his life, can 

 wander an unlimited distance from his starting point, and may 

 take the most tortuous and winding route, so the structure of the 

 original organism has undergone manifold changes during its 

 terrestrial life. And just as the traveller at first doubts whether 

 he will ever get beyond the immediate neighbourhood of his 

 starting-point, and yet after some years finds himself very far 

 removed from it — so the insignificant changes, which distinguish 

 the first set of generations of an organism, lead on through 

 innummerable other sets, to forms which seem totally different 

 from the first, but which have descended from them by the most 

 gradual transition. All this is so obvious that there is hardly any 

 need of a metaphor to explain it, and yet it is frequently mis- 

 understood, as shown by the assertion that natural selection can 

 create nothing new, the fact being that it so adds up and combines 

 the insignificant small deviations, presented by natural variation, 

 that it is continually producing something new." — Aug. 

 Weis^ianx, " On Heredity," p. 136. 



I have given this long extract because I have not met with a 

 more lucid exposition of the probable way in which changes are 

 brought about in organisms. 



I do not think that sufficient credit has been given to livins 

 matter for sensitiveness. Living things are forced by an internal 

 energy to grow. "We are not now concerned with the ichi/ living 

 matter grows — we may never know that — but with the how it 

 grows, and assumes different forms. All evolutionists admit that 

 it does grow and change. 



In growing, this sensitive plastic matter acts as a set of elastic 

 feelers or tentacles would do, to ascertain in which direction it 

 can grow and develop. "What the higher animals can do through 

 the help of their eyes, ears, &c., and their complete intelligence, 

 this sensitive matter* can do with its simple apparatus. The 

 direction of growth is determined by two main factors, viz.^ 

 the external conditions, which may be changeable, and the 

 internal power of adapting itself to those conditions, while 



* Commonly called " protoplasm." 

 A p. 1724. D 



