December 9, 1909] 



NA 7 URE 



167 



the medium height, with narrow heads, broad noses and 

 faces ; the Primitives resemble the latter, but have a 

 cephaHc index ten in excess of the Iberian. 'I'he Austra- 

 loid and Primitive types are probably the original elements 

 in the population, the other types representing modifica- 

 tions caused by the introduction of Europeans and Chinese, 

 recent and remote. The result is an improvement in all 

 the physical measurements, which, with increasing European 

 md Chinese immigration, will probably advance, and be 

 iccompanied by an increase of bodily and mental vigour, 

 I process facilitated by improved nutrition and in hygiene 

 by the reduction of noxious parasitic life. 



The second paper devoted to pure ethnography is an 

 account, by Fr. Juan Villaverde, of the Quiangan Ifugao 

 tribes. They are of Negrito affinities, and present a re- 

 markable combination of an advanced culture with 

 savagery. They live by agriculture, cultivating rice in 

 the hilly tracts by an elaborate system of terrace farming, 

 by vi'hich they utilise the supplies of spring water which 

 they consider necessary to the growth of this crop. They 

 have neither king nor rulers, but are divided into two 



Ifugaos wiEh wooden shovels, Banaue 



distinct grades, the nobles exercising considerable authority 

 over the plebeians. A man can rise to the higher from 

 the lower class by the e.xercise of profuse hospitality, which 

 is provided by a series of elaborate feasts. They respect 

 the aged, who act the part of priests in their idolatrous 

 rites, and generally hold women in high estimation. They 

 divorce their wives continually, each of the pair readily 

 finding a fresh partner. Their worship is chieHy that of 

 the moon and other heavenly bodies, and they practise 

 divination to relieve the fears of the spirit world which 

 always beset them. They lend and borrow on exorbitant 

 interest, and sons are responsible for the debts of their 

 parents. Combined with this fairly advanced culture they 

 are grossly addicted to drunkenness, and the absence of 

 any controlling authority leads to constant blood feuds, 

 every murder being followed by inexorable vengeance ex- 

 tending, not only to the offender, but embracing his 

 nearest relatives. This is accompanied by the custom of 

 head-hunting, in whicli even women, though ordinarilv 

 respected, and children are not spared, the heads of the 

 victims being brought home in triumph, and the fronts of 

 the houses decorated with the captured heads. 



NO. 2093, VOL. 82] 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF EVOLUTIONARY 

 IDEAS. 



'T"HE annual Herbert Spencer lecture was delivered at 

 Oxford on December 2 by the Linacre professor. Dr. 

 G. C. Bourne. In the course of a brief historical sketch, 

 the lecturer pointed out that evolutionary ideas were widely 

 prevalent at the end of the eighteenth century, though, 

 after being apparently routed by Cuvier, the doctrine re- 

 mained for many years in abeyance. Herbert Spencer was 

 a pioneer in the evolutionary revival. Not an original 

 investigator in zoology or botany, he was yet a very 

 earnest student of biological subjects. Evolution, in 

 Spencer's view, was a cosmic process, consisting essentiallv 

 in the passage of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous. 

 Confronted with the difficulty of the transition from the 

 non-living to the living, Spencer framed the theory of 

 " physiological units " with their mutual interactions. 

 This proved to be a fertile idea, and was adopted in one 

 form or another by many subsequent investigators. In 

 phylogeny there is a real advance from the homogeneous 

 to the heterogeneous ; in 

 ontogeny, however, there 

 are obvious difficulties in 

 the way of this interpreta- 

 t i o n. These difficulties 

 Herbert Spencer tried to 

 meet by assuming for his 

 units " polarities " of 

 differing values, and a 

 power of undergoing modi- 

 fication when subject to 

 the influence of each other 

 and of the environment. 

 Hence a true epigenesis 

 took place, and in this 

 way he thought it possible 

 to account for both in- 

 heritance and variation. 

 .Acquired characters, he 

 held, must be inherited ; 

 and on this basis he reared 

 the fabric of the " syn- 

 thetic philosophy." 



Against the system thus 

 outlined, two crushing 

 blows were deUvered by 

 Weismann. The first was 

 his insistence on the fact 

 that there is no clear 

 evidence of the inheritance 

 of acquired characters ; the 

 second was the demonstra- 

 tion that the germ-plasm 

 in ontogeny is from the 

 first a structure of very 

 great complexity. The 

 germ, it was found, must 

 have historical properties, and the embryological history 

 of the individual is really a genealogy. 



The bearing of recent experiments in the " mechanics 

 of development " upon the views of Spencer and Weismann 

 respectively was very carefully and lucidly explained by 

 Prof. Bourne, who showed that the pre-existence of certain 

 materials in the germ, and their subsequent sorting out in 

 the course of ontogeny, facts which could no longer be 

 denied, were entirely adverse to the Spencerian conception. 

 On the other hand, the view of Weismann, though in some 

 particulars erroneous, received in the main a strong con- 

 firmation from experiments by the followers of Mendel. 

 Prof. Bourne concluded his discourse by urging that 

 biological studies were no mere plaything, but of the 

 highest importance for dealing with human affairs. An 

 essential link was now broken in the chain of the synthetic 

 philosophy, and it behoved those concerned in such matters 

 to inquire whether our sociological methods were right, 

 and whether certain schemes of social improvement, 

 founded on the biological principles of fifty years ago, 

 should not be re-considered in the light of those of the 

 present day. 



