January, 1913.} THE ORCHID REVIEW. 7 
Island Life. From the latter we extract the following concerning the 
distribution of Orchids and their abundance in the Tropics :— 
Their usually minute and abundant seeds would be as easily carried as the spores 
of ferns, and their frequent epiphytic habit affords them an endless variety of 
stations on which to vegetate, and at the same time removes them in a great measure 
from the competition of other plants. When, therefore, the climate is sufficiently 
moist and equable, and there is a luxuriant forest vegetation, we may expect to find 
Orchids plentiful on such tropical islands as possess an abundance of insects adapted 
to fertilise them, and which are not too far removed from other lands or continents 
from which their seeds might be conveyed. 
Many of Wallace’s writings lie outside our sphere, but we must add our 
tribute of recognition to his share in establishing the great principle of 
evolution by means of natural selection. In conclusion, we may briefly 
refer to the Darwin-Wallace celebration held on July 1st, 1908, at which 
the surviving author gave an interesting account of the circumstances which 
led them independently to the same discovery (O.R., xvi. pp. 225-228)—a 
discovery which throws a flood of light on the marvellous adaptations seen 
among Orchids. 
In an Obituary notice in Nature it is remarked that Wallace as an old 
man was impatient of the recent work which centres round Mendelism and 
mutations. To this Prof. E. B. Poulton very well replies that with regard 
to Mendelism he felt, as many far younger men feel, that it is both 
interesting and important, but that from the first it has been put in a wrong 
light, and erroneously used as a weapon of attack upon other subjects to 
which it is not in any way antagonistic. And respecting mutation Wallace 
himself wrote: ‘‘ Mutation asa theory is obsolutely nothing new—only the 
assertion that new species originate always in sports—for which the 
evidence adduced is the most meagre and inconclusive of any ever set forth 
with such pretentious claims!” He was a firm believer in natural selection 
as the motive cause of evolution, and once remarked that Darwinism 
actually does explain whole fields of phenomena that Mutationists do not 
attempt to deal with or even to approach. His death severs the last 
link with the great evolutionary writers of the mid-nineteenth century— 
the men who transformed the thought of the world—but his memory 
is immortal. a 
Sir Trevor LAWRENCE, Bart., K.C.V.O., V.M.H.—It is with the 
deepest regret that we have to record the death, on Tuesday, December 
23rd last, of Sir James John Trevor Lawrence, Bart., of Burford Lodge, 
Dorking, a week before his 82nd birthday. He was born on December 
3oth, 1831, and was the only surviving son of the first Baronet, Sir William 
Lawrence, F.R.S., Sergeant-Surgeon to Queen Victoria. He was educated 
at Winchester, and studied medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, 
afterwards serving from 1853 to 1863 in the Indian Medical Service, which 
