SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



201 



civilization may be partly, or altogether, due to 

 ignorance of the right method of treatment. 



On one point Mr. Reid confesses that he has 

 regarded it as such a foregone conclusion that the 

 evidence would be in his favour, that he has not 

 been very eager in collecting it. We think he has 

 perhaps unconsciously followed the same method 

 on other occasions. Really, all through this part 

 of his subject Mr. Reid ignores the fact that there 

 are other causes capable of producing the greater 

 part, if not the whole, of the effects he ascribes 

 to evolution against disease. 



With regard to drunkenness a similar line of 

 argument is taken. The human race, it is sup- 

 posed, has undergone evolution with respect to 

 strong drink. During countless generations those 

 individuals with the strongest craving for it have 

 been eliminated, and those which had not the 

 craving survived. If this were so, then those 

 nations which have been longest familiar with 

 alcohol and suffered most from it in the past 

 should now be the soberest. Mr. Reid does 

 contend that there is evidence that this is so. 

 Thus he points out that nations like the Italians, 

 Spaniards, etc., who have longest been familiar with 

 alcohol, suffer the least from it ; those which have 

 been familiar with it for a shorter time, like the 

 English, suffer more ; while those who have been 

 recently introduced to it, like the various un- 

 civilized nations of to-day, suffer most. Admitting 

 that Mr. Reid is right in his arrangement of 

 nations according to their comparative drunken- 

 ness, there remains the question of the length of 

 their acquaintance with alcohol. On this point it 

 seems extremely rash to assert that Italians and 



Spaniards have used alcohol longer than the 

 English. It may be so, but what is the evidence ? 

 Mr. Reid's peculiar views, and the greatness of his 

 faith in natural selection, lead him to propose a 

 startling remedy for intemperance. The efforts of 

 temperance reformers and teetotalers, we are told, 

 have hitherto been all in the wrong direction, they 

 have been positively playing into the hands of the 

 enemy they are supposed to be fighting. Mr. 

 Reid, in effect, says, if you restrict the sale of 

 drink, reduce the number of public-houses, remove 

 temptation out of the way of the drunken, or do 

 anything to deprive people of the opportunity of 

 readily obtaining drink, you are undoing the 

 beneficial work of natural selection. You are 

 depriving nature of the instrument with which she 

 is preparing a sober race. Let those who have the 

 craving have every opportunity for gratifying it, 

 and they will be weeded out by natural selection. 

 Finally, a race without any such craving will be 

 evolved. Such is the truly heroic remedy proposed 

 for intemperance by Mr. Reid, in conformity with 

 his general views on the present evolution of man ; 

 but the thought arrives, if natural selection is able 

 to eliminate the drunkard, how does it happen that 

 it has permitted his evolution ? For it is one of 

 the canons of evolution that the struggle for 

 existence will not allow the development of any 

 injurious quality. 



On the whole, it is doubtful whether there is any 

 evidence to show that man is being evolved in the 

 direction of immunity against disease and alcohol 

 The facts adduced by Mr. Reid in support of his 

 views can be otherwise more rationally explained. 

 2g r Queen's Terrace, Jesmond, Newcastle-on-Tyne. 



BRITISH INFUSORIA. 



By E. H. J. Schuster, F.Z.S. 



(Continued from page 139.) 



Part V. — Ciliata Hypotricha. 



TN the order Hypotricha we can observe a very 

 high degree of differentiation. The vibratile 

 cilia, which we find forming an even and regular 

 covering of the body in the Holotricha, and which 

 are more highly organized in the Heterotricha, in- 

 asmuch as a special adoral band has appeared, 

 reach in the Hypotricha their highest point of 

 differentiation. They are here entirely absent 

 from the dorsal surface of the body, and are present 

 on the ventral surface, in the lower forms as plain 

 rows of primitive cilia, in the higher forms as stiff 

 bristles, claws, styles, and feather-like excrescences. 

 With the aid of these the animal is not only able to 

 swim, but also — a much higher accomplishment — 

 to walk, or rather to crawl, about the fragments 



of decaying matter upon which creatures of this 

 kind live. 



The dorsal surface, although not provided with 

 cilia, is sometimes invested with immovable hair- 

 like processes, which perhaps may be looked upon 

 as protective in function. The body is in most 

 cases rather compressed and is dorsally convex, 

 ventrally flat. The mouth and anus are usually 

 conspicuously developed and on the ventral side. 

 Trichocysts are rarely present. 



Family Chlamydodontidae. — "Animalcules free- 

 swimming, ovate, with a convex dorsal and flattened 

 ventral surface; the cuticle elastic or indurate; the 

 ventral surface more or less completely clothed 

 with fine vibratile cilia ; the oral aperture opening 



H 3 



