356 PROCEEDINGS OF THE OHIO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



ful sign to see the staid old science attired in overalls. You 

 fellows who are interested in 'pure' science are a little inclined 

 to poke fun at the economic worker, but there is one little point 

 of difference too often overlooked. If we make mistakes there 

 are dozens of people who are prepared and glad to rise up and 

 correct us and who are vitally interested in the correctness of 

 the observations. On the other hand, if a fellow gets off a freak 

 theory as to the origin of the left hind leg of a starfish, nobody 

 cares whether it is correct or not. It would be a safe bet that 

 there are more incorrect observations published per page in 'pure' 

 scientific zoology than in the economic literature." More in- 

 formal and, probably, more radical than if intended for printing 

 in a government publication ! But none the less suggestive and 

 worthy of consideration. And nowhere, perhaps, is pure science 

 being more mercilessly submitted to the control of practical test 

 and popular criticism than in economic entomology. 



EVOLUTION 



From this sermonette on applied science we return to theoret- 

 ical dissipations. Today, as in 1891, biological interest centres 

 around the evolution theory and its two supports, heredity and 

 variation. Of course the theory of evolution was generally ac- 

 cepted by scientific men before 1891, — Huxley's essay on "The 

 Coming of Age of the Origin of Species" was already eleven 

 years old. But civil war among the different schools of 

 evolutionists, and especially between Darwinism and Lamarckism, 

 was in full swing then as now, although with rather a different 

 outlook as to prospective victory. 



Variation and heredity are absolute essentials to any theory 

 of the transformation of species ; variation without heredity 

 would destroy species, heredity without variation would negate 

 transformation. But the way in which these foundation stones 

 of evolution were treated by Lamarck and Darwin was strikingly 

 dift'erent. Lamarck's theory accounts for variation through the 

 influence of environment during the life of the individual animal ;. 

 heredity was assumed. On the other hand, Darwin assumed not 

 only heredity (Pangenesis was never more than a "provisional 



