796 REPOET— 1893. 



of characters acquired by the body being transmitted through the germ-plasm to 

 the offspring. From this he implies that where we find no intelligible mechanism 

 to convey an imprint from the body to the germ, there no imprint can be conveyed. 

 Romanes has brought forward many instances which seem to contradict this theory, 

 and Herbert Spencer remarks that ' a recognised principle of reasoning — " the law 

 of parsimony " — forbids the assumption of more causes than are needful for the 

 explanation of phenomena. We have evident causes which arrest the cell mul- 

 tiplication, therefore it is illegitimate to ascribe this arrest to some property 

 inherent in the cells.' 



With regard to the reduction or disappearance of an organ, he states 'that 

 when natural selection, either direct or reversed, is set aside, why the mere cessation 

 of selection should cause decrease of an organ, irrespective of the direct effects of 

 disease, I am unable to see. Beyond the production of changes in the size of parts, 

 by the selection of fortuitously arising variation, I can see but one other cause for 

 the production of them — the competition among the parts for nutriment. . . . The 

 active parts are well supplied, while the inactive parts are ill supplied and dwindle, 

 as does the arm of the Hindu fakir. This competition is the cause of economy of 

 growth — this is the cause of decrease from disease.' 



I may illustrate Mr. Herbert Spencer's remarks by the familiar instance of the 

 pinions of the Kakapo (Strinffops) — still remaining, but powerless for flight. 



As for acquired habits, such as the modification of bird architecture by the 

 same species under changed circumstances, how they can be better accounted for than 

 by hereditary transmitted instinct, I do not see. I mean such cases as the ground- 

 nesting Diduncidus in Samoa having saved itself from extinction since the intro- 

 duction of cats, by roosting and nesting in trees ; or the extraordinary acquired 

 habit of the black-cap in the Canaries, observed by Dr. Lowe, of piercing the 

 calyx of Hibiscus rosa- sinensis — an introduced plant — to attract insects, for which 

 he quietly sits waiting. So the lying low of a covey of partridges under an 

 artificial kite would seem to be a transmitted instinct from a far-off ancestry not 

 yet lost ; for many generations of partridges, I fear, must have passed since the 

 last kite hovered over the forefathers of an English partridge, save in very few 

 parts of the island. 



I cannot conclude without recalling that the past year has witnessed the 

 severance of the last link with the pre-Darwinian naturalists in the death of Sir 

 Richard Owen. Though never himself a field-worker, or the discoverer of a single 

 tinimal living or extinct, his career extends over the whole hi.story of paleonto- 

 logy. I say palaeontology, for he was not a geologist in the sense of studying 

 the order, succession, area, structure, and disturbance of strata. But he accumu- 

 lated facts on the fossil remains that came to his hands, till he won the fame of 

 being the greatest comparative anatomist of the age. To him we owe the building 

 tip of the skeletons of the giant Dinornithidcp. and many other of the perished forms 

 of the gigantic sloths, armadilloes, and mastodons of South America, Australia, 

 and Europe. He was himself a colossal worker, and he never worked for popu- 

 larity. He had lived and worked too long before the Victorian age to accept 

 readily the doctrines which have revolutionised that science, though none 

 has had a larger share in accumulating the facts, the combination of which of 

 necessity produced that transformation. But, though he clung fondly to his old 

 idea of the archetype, no man did more than Owen to explode the rival theories of 

 both Wernerians and Huttonians, till the controversies of Plutonians and Nep- 

 tunians come to us from the far past with as little to move our interest as the blue 

 and green factions of Constantinople. 



Nor can we forget that it is to Sir Richard's indomitable perseverance that we 

 owe the magnificent palace which contains the national collections in Cromwell 

 Road. For many years he fought the battle almost alone. His demand for a build- 

 ing of two stories, covering five acres, was denounced as audacious. The scheme 

 was pronounced foolish, crazy, and extravagant; but, after twenty years' struggle, 

 he was victorious, and in 1872 the Act was passed which gave not five, but more 

 than seven acres for the purpose. Owen retired from its direction in 1883, having 

 achieved the crowning victory of his life. Looking back in his old age on the 



