874 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. i 



to prepare a new edition of his " Island Life," 

 and asked me to help secure the information 

 necessary to bring it up to date. I of course 

 gladly agreed to do this, and was supplied with 

 the loose sheets of the first edition, which I 

 carried to the British Museum (Natural His- 

 tory) and the library of the Zoological Society, 

 comparing the chapters with recent literature, 

 and especially consulting different naturalists 

 on their specialties. This not only proved 

 extremely interesting work, but it gave me an 

 introduction to many men I had wished to 

 meet, and especially brought me into constant 

 communication with Dr. Wallace himself. All 

 who were approached courteously gave the 

 best aid in their power; but one chapter, that 

 on the British Islands, proved quite a bone of 

 contention. Dr. Wallace had given lists of 

 animals and plants peculiar to those islands, 

 enumerating all the species and varieties which 

 appeared not to have been recorded from else- 

 where. He argued that while no doubt these 

 lists required amendment, yet it was probably 

 true that we possessed a considerable series of 

 endemic forms. Almost without exception, 

 the naturalists of that time expressed great 

 scepticism on this point, while some freely 

 ridiculed the whole idea. Even when furnish- 

 ing data, they hastened to say that they were 

 probably of no value. Since that time, careful 

 collections have been made by British natural- 

 ists on the continent, and much work of vari- 

 ous kinds has been undertaken which bears 

 directly upon the question of an endemic ele- 

 ment in the British fauna. The result has 

 been to reveal an amount of divergence far in 

 excess of Dr. Wallace's expectations; so much 

 so, that when a few years ago I mentioned to 

 him the recent results of mammalogists, he 

 was not himself prepared to go so far, but said 

 they surely must be splitting hairs. 



Early in 1891 I went down to Parkstone 

 and had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. and 

 Mrs. Wallace. Por about a week I spent a 

 large part of each day at Dr. Wallace's house 

 and sometimes went for walks with him. I 

 now regret that I kept no notes of the conver- 

 sations, but I recall that we discussed all the 

 debatable biological and sociological questions 



of the day. More especially, we talked about 

 the inheritance of acquired characters, and 

 tried to postulate crucial experiments to prove 

 the matter one way or the other. We found it 

 extremely diiEcult to even imagine an experi- 

 ment which should be above all possible criti- 

 cism. There was also much to be said about 

 ■geographical distribution; and just at that 

 time I had published some remarks on alpine 

 plants in Nature, which had called forth ad- 

 verse criticism, to which I replied while at Dr. 

 Wallace's house. I remember that he encour- 

 aged me to go forward in this matter, and not 

 mind if people said I was out of my proper 

 department. He believed in, and of course 

 illustrated by his own conduct, the right of any 

 man to study what he chose, and not be 

 limited in his intellectual activities because 

 his colleagues had labelled him this or that. 



After my return home we continued to dis- 

 cuss the inheritance of acquired characters 

 through the mails, especially since at that time 

 Dr. Romanes and others had on foot a project 

 for an experimental station. The following is 

 from a letter of February 7, 1891 : 



Your former letter (of Feb. 2) giving Eomanes' 

 reply to you, set me going and I immediately 

 wrote to Galton. I enclose his reply, whioh please 

 return when you are writing next. I then sat 

 down and sketched a series of a dozen sets of ex- 

 periments to test the two questions of "heredity 

 of acquired characters ' ' and the ' ' amount of ster- 

 ility in the hybrids between closely allied species, ' ' 

 — and also a few to test the questions of instinct 

 in nest building, and the "homing" power of 

 dogs, cats, etc. These I am now sending to him 

 and shall then receive his objections to them as 

 affording tests. In the mean time will you try and 

 formulate a few experiments which would serve as 

 crucial tests of the question of the "heredity of 

 individually acquired characters?" You may hit 

 on some that will meet the objections he will prob- 

 ably make to mine. I do not think there will be 

 any difficulty in getting good observers in paid 

 servants under the supervision of a committee. 



On Pebruary 13 Dr. Wallace reported the 

 receipt of a long letter from Galton, criticizing 

 some of the suggested experiments. The letter 

 continues : 



