ROMANES' MENTAL EVOLUTION, ETC. 6i 



either to himself or any one else. Fortunately Mr. 

 Eomanes is not Mr. Darwin, and though he has cer- 

 tainly got Mr. Darwin's mantle, and got it very much 

 too, it will not on Mr. Eomanes' shoulders hide a good 

 deal that people were not going to observe too closely 

 while Mr. Darwin wore it. 



I ought to say that the late Mr. Darwin appears 

 himself eventually to have admitted the soundness 

 of the theory connecting heredity and memory. Mr. 

 Eomanes quotes a letter written by Mr. Darwin in 

 the last year of his life, in which he speaks of an 

 intelligent action gradually becoming " institutive, 

 i.e., memory transmitted from one generation to 

 another." * 



Briefly, the stages of Mr. Darwin's opiaion upon 

 the subject of hereditary memory are as follows : — 



1859. "It would be the most serious error to sup- 

 pose that the greater number of instincts have been 

 acquired by habit in one generation and transmitted 

 by inheritance to succeeding generations." t And 

 this more especially applies to the instincts of many 

 ants. 



1876. "It would be a serious error to suppose," &c., 

 as before.J 



1 8 8 1 . " We should remember what a mass of in- 

 herited knowledge is crowded into the minute brain of 

 a worker ant." § 



1881 or 1882. Speaking of a given habitual 



* Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 301. November 1883. 



+ Origin of Species, Ed. I. p. 209. 



X Ibid., Ed. VI., 1876, p. 2c6. 



§ Formation of Vegetable Mould, &o,, p. 98. J 



