SEPTEMBER, 191 4.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 259 
acquired the new property of drying in a few seconds on exposure to the 
air? We cannot wait for an answer until the question is settled whether 
“genetic factors are permanent and indestructible,” as the author says 
some of his Mendelian colleagues assert, or whether they “ occasionally 
undergo a quantitative disintegration,’ as he now admits is possible, and 
which breeders have known all the time. He says “It is no time to 
discuss the origin of the Mollusca or of Dicotyledons, while we are not 
even sure how it came to pass that Primula obconica has in twenty-five 
years produced its abundant new forms almost under our eyes.’”’ We 
don’t exactly see the connection, but we will propound to him that much 
simpler question about the rostellum of an Orchid. And we await an 
answer ! eee 
We now pass on to the origin of cultivated races, and we find Orchids 
included among ‘“ multitudes of crosses of which we have pretty full 
histories”; the behaviour of crosses ; the amazing polymorphism in the 
second generation from a cross in Antirrhinum, and Lotzy’s suggestion 
that all variation may be due to such crossing, which we are told “ will at 
least do something to expose the artificiality of systematic zoology and 
botany.” But none of these things seem to lead us anywhere in particular 
so far as evolution is concerned, for we are told that “this is no time for 
devising theories of evolution, and I propound none.” 
The conclusion somehow does not seem quite satisfactory, for the 
lecturer proceeds : “ But as we have got to recognise that there has been 
an evolution, that somehow or other the forms of life have arisen from 
fewer forms, we may as well see whether we are limited to the old view 
that evolutionary progress is from the simple to the complex, and whether 
after all it is conceivable that the progress was the other way about. . . . 
Task you simply to open your minds to this possibility. It involves a 
Certain effort. We have to reverse our habitual modes of thought. At 
first it may seem rank absurdity to suppose that the primordial form or 
forms of protoplasm could have contained complexity enough to produce 
the diverse types of life.” We quite agree, and not only at first, but at last, 
and all the time. It is a first-rate illustration of topsyturveydom, and 
unfortunately cannot be attributed to the fact that the address was 
delivered at the Antipodes, where things have a habit of arranging them- 
Selves upside down. 
A suggestion of powers conveyed to the organism by additions from 
Sutside is only mentioned to be abandoned, but it is suggested that “ by the 
*-atrangement of a very moderate number of things we soon reach a 
