TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 843 



man who knows a palm from a dragon-tree, so the chance is lost. Strange to say, 

 the medical men ot the Government service know less and care less for Natural 

 History than the military men, who at least regret they have no training or study 

 to enable them to take an intelligent interest in what they see around them. A 

 doctor nowadays cares for no living thing larger or more complicated than a 

 bacteriuvi or a bacillus.^ 



But there are other and even more serious grounds why the present dominance 

 of one aspect of our subject is a matter for regret. In the concluding chapter of 

 the ' Origin,' Darwin wrote : ' I look with confidence to the future — to young and 

 rising naturalists.' But I observe that most of the new writers on the Darwinian 

 theory, and, oddly enough, especially when they have been trained at Cambridge, 

 generally begin by more or less rejecting it as a theory of the origin of species, 

 and then proceed unhesitatingly to reconstruct it. The attempt rarely seems to 

 me successful, perhaps because the limits of the laboratory are unfavourable to 

 the accumulation of the class of observations which are suitable for the 

 purpose. The laboratory, in fact, has not contributed much to the Darwinian 

 theory, except the ' Law of Recapitulation,' and that, I am told, is going out of 

 fashion. 



The Darwinian theory, being, as I have attempted to show, the outcome of the 

 Natural History method, rested at every point on a copious basis of fact and 

 observation. This more modern speculation lacks. The result is a revival of 

 transcendentalism. Of this we have had a copious crop in this country, but it is 

 quite put in the shade by that with which we have been supplied from America. 

 Perhaps the most remarkable feature is the persistent vitality of Lamarckism. As 

 Darwin remarks : ' Lamarck's one suggestion as to the cause of the gradual modifica- 

 tion of species — effort excited by change of conditions — was, on the face of it, 

 inapplicable to the whole vegetable world ' (ii. 189). And if we fall back on 

 the inherited direct effect of change of conditions, though Darwin admits that 

 ' physical conditions have a more direct effect on plants than on animals ' (ii. 319), 

 I have never been able to convince myself that that effect is inherited. I will 

 give one illustration. The difference in habit of even the same species of plant 

 when grown under mountain and lowland conditions is a matter of general obser- 

 vation. It would be difficult to imagine a case of ' acquired characters ' more 

 likely to be ' inherited.' But this does not seem to be the case. The recent careful 

 research of Gaston Bonnier only confirms the experience of cultivators. ' The 

 modifications acquired by the plant when transported for a definite time from the 

 plains to the Alps, or rice versa, disappear at the end of the same period when the 

 plant is restored to its original conditions.' ' 



Darwin, in an eloquent passage, which is too long forme to quote,' has shown 

 how enormously the interest of Natural History is enhanced ' when we regard 

 every production of Nature as one which has had a long history,' and ' when we 

 contemplate every complex structure ... as the summing up of many con- 

 trivances.' But this can only be done, or at any rate begun, in the field and not in 

 the laboratory. 



A more serious peril is the dying out amongst us of two branches of botanical 

 study in which we have hitherto occupied a position of no small distinction. 

 Apart from the staffs of our official institutions, there seems to be no one who 

 either takes any interest in, or appreciates in the smallest degree, the importance of 

 ■.systematic and descriptive botany. And geographical distribution is almost in a 

 w^orse plight, yet Darwin calls it, ' that grand subject, that almost keystone of the 

 laws of creation ' (i. 356). 



I am aware that it is far easier to point out an evil than to remedy it. The 

 te.iching of botany at the present day has reached a pitch of excellence and 

 earnestness which it has never reached before. That it is somewhat one-sided 

 cannot probably be remedied without a subdivision of the subject and an increase 

 in the number of teachers. If it has a positive fault, it is that it is sometimes 

 inclined to be too dogmatic and deductive. Like Darwin, at any rate in a 

 biological matter, 'I never feel convinced by deduction, even in the case of 



' Ann. d. Sc. nat., 7' ser. xx. 355. " Origin, 426. 



