RECORDS OF MEETINGS 297 



tion, I have carefully refrained from ever expressing any opinion of the 

 matter of cause. When one^s opinions in politics or religion differ from 

 those of the majority, it is often judicious to say nothing about them. 

 Many years ago I came to the conclusion that Darwinism is not the main 

 factor in evolution, and all the work that I have done since has the fur- 

 ther confirmed me in this view. I even go so far as to regard it as a 

 secondary factor. That Nature kills off the unfit is of course undeniable, 

 but that this killing off of the unfit brings about the modifications which 

 we see in nature, I do not hold. It is of course easy to give a plausible 

 explanation of how anything may have originated, but I have always 

 looked upon Darwinism as something like the Calvinistic doctrine of 

 foreordination, as one of those things that I could easily prove conclu- 

 sively, but could never bring myself to believe. 



Take, for example, the Australian flying Phalanger (Petauroides 

 volans). It is extremely closely allied to the ordinary ring-tailed Pha- 

 langer, and were it not for the skin expansion, it would be placed in the 

 same genus (Pseudochirus) . One might readily argue that a group of 

 ring-tailed Phalangers had a terrible struggle with some carnivorous 

 enemy and that those that were the better able to jump from branch to 

 branch were the ones that escaped, and that gradually through thousands 

 of generations a slight fold in the skin ultimately developed into the 

 large lateral expansion. If we knew nothing of the conditions of life, 

 we would assume that such a struggle was still going on, that all those 

 flying Phalangers that had not their skin fold perfectly developed would 

 be in constant danger of destruction, and that the beautiful mechanism 

 was kept up by the severe struggle for existence. But whatever may have- 

 been the conditions in the past, we may safely state that there is no such 

 terrible struggle going on at present. In fact the ring-tailed Phalangers, 

 which have no wing-like expansion, get along just as well as those flying 

 Phalangers which have it. They live in the same trees side by side and 

 presumably have the same enemies, but so far from the ring-tailed Pha- 

 langer being handicapped by the absence of the skin expansion, from the 

 fact that it is more common than the flying form we may assume that it 

 gets on at least equally well. From what we know of the animal life 

 during Pleistocene times, we may confidently state that the conditions 

 were closely similar to those we see to-day. 



Instances of a like sort might be multiplied indefinitely, and we are 

 almost forced to consider that some other factor has been at work than 

 merely the elimination of the unfit. 



Lamarckism affords an explanation of quite a different sort. There 

 seems to be little doubt that when an organ ceases to be of use it becomes 



