' The Post-Pliocene Non-Marine Mollusca of Ireland.' 165 



CO very and research, and surely it is rash and quite unwarranted 

 to claim more than tentative value for palaeontological evidence, 

 when even in the present paper, the authors assure us that 

 they, with all the lavish assistance they have had, ' have only 

 been able just to touch the fringe of the subject,' but when 

 still more workers are avilable ' many more important discov- 

 eries will be made, new light will be thrown on problems at 

 present obscure, whilst not impossibly some of our most 

 cherished conclusions will be modified.' 



In the Hght of the foregoing confession of our ignorance of 

 the subject by the authors themselves, it is quite illogical to 

 so confidently declare, as they have done, the conclusions to 

 which they have been led. 



There are many other debatable points which the limited 

 space at my disposal will not allow me at present to touch 

 upon, but it will be useful to reproduce some of Kennard and 

 Woodward's declared convictions which guide them in their 

 scientific work. In the first place, they ' entirely reject the 

 reality of the struggle for existence,' and secondly deny the 

 ' Dominancy or Superiority of the recently evolved or modern 

 species over their more ancient predecessors,' and affirm that 

 it is at variance with the facts ' that the earlier evolved and 

 therefore weaker species have been driven away from the 

 evolutionary centre by the later evolved or dominant species,' 

 contending that it ' is certain that over the greater part of the 

 British Isles, there is no competition between the various species 

 of Mollusca,' and that it is totally at variance with ascertained 

 geological evidence, that 'certain species have driven out others,' 

 and that ' it does not follow that because a species is higher in 

 the evolutionary scale, it is therefore stronger in the struggle 

 for existence with a lower one,' giving, among other instances, 

 that Man occasionally succumbs to Bacterial diseases. 



The reality, however, of the existence of Dominancy, which 

 is intimately bound up with the Unity of plan of Evolution, 

 though challenged from time to time by the still numerous 

 adherents to the more or less modified Forbesian and other 

 theories, has never been successfully controverted, and there- 

 fore still holds the field as a very important factor in the 

 progress and advancement of organic life and its dispersal 

 over the globe. 



May I, in conclusion, express my regret at the disingenuous 

 spirit which has apparently animated the authors of the ' Post- 

 Pliocene Non-Marine Mollusca of Ireland ' as shown more 

 especially in the unwarranted use of names and terms quite 

 out of place in a scientific discussion, and which in the present 

 state of feeling in this country are objectionable and tend to 

 excite a spirit of animosity which is not in the interest of 

 friendly intercourse and therefore regrettable in its results. 



1918 May 1. 



