The President's Address. By L. S. Beale, F.B.S. 201 



eyes, instead of accepting, without ever seeing, what they are told 

 has heen seen by eyes which are supposed to be speciahy privileged 

 to see. 



As evidence of the nonsense often advanced in favour of some 

 form of evolution, let me quote a few sentences from an article on 

 " Butterfly Psychology," published in the ' St. James's Grazette.' 

 Like most advocates of evolution, the writer has the knack of 

 telling his story in such a pleasant way as to make people imagine 

 that he is explaining the nature and causes of things he describes, 

 while in truth he is doing nothing of the kind. He explains 

 nothing at all, but merely announces astounding assumptions based 

 upon conjectures of his own, or of others. 



" In early life the future butterfly emerges from the egg as a 

 caterpillar. At once his many legs begin to move, and the cater- 

 pillar moves forward by their motion. But the mechanism which 

 set them moving was the nervous system, with its ganglia working 

 the separate legs of each segment. This movement is probably 

 quite as automatic as the act of sucking in the new-born infant. 

 The caterpillar walks, it knows not why, but simply because it has 

 to walk. When it reaches a fit place for feeding, which differs 

 according to the nature of the particular larva, it feeds automatically. 

 Certain special external stimulants of sight, smell, or touch set up 

 the appropriate actions in the mandibles, just as contact of the lips 

 with an external body sets up sucking in the infant. All these 

 movements depend upon what we call instinct — that is to say, 

 organic habits registered in the nervous system of the race. They 

 have arisen by natural selection alone, because those insects which 

 duly performed them survived, and those which did not duly per- 

 form them died out. After a considerable span of life spent in 

 feeding and walking about in search of more food, the caterpillar 

 one day found itself compelled by an inner monitor to alter its 

 habits. Why, it knew not ; but, just as a tired child sinks to 

 sleep, the gorged and full-fed caterpillar sank peacefully into a 

 dormant state." 



Of course all this may have been written in joke. The writer 

 may possibly be laughing at evolutionists. The " inward monitor " 

 of the " gorged and full-fed caterpillar " undoubtedly looks rather 

 suspicious, but one hardly likes to hint at anything so serious. 

 Evolutionists will, I dare say, repudiate such "evolution" as a 

 mere travesty, but it is quite time that half-a-dozen evolu- 

 tionists who agree on main points should clearly state their 

 behef. 



In conclusion, let me ask you as students of nature's pro- 

 cesses, whether you have not seen enough to convince you that 

 the revival of the assumption which has been abandoned and 

 reintroduced many times during the last few centuries, that the 



