266 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



the hour-hand moves, and yet when it comes to the 

 point, he is obliged to confess that he cannot see it do 

 so.'' It is not worth while to meet what Professor 

 Bay Lankester has been above quoted as saying about 

 Lamarckism beyond by quoting the following passage 

 from a review of." The Neanderthal Skull on Evolution " 

 in the "Monthly Journal of Science" for June 1885 

 (p. 362):— 



" On the very next page the author reproduces the 

 threadbare objection that the ' supporters of the theory 

 have never yet succeeded in observing a single in- 

 stance in all the millions of years invented (!) in its 

 support of one species of animal turning iato another.' 

 Now, ex hypothesi, one species turns into another not 

 rapidly, and as in a transformation scene, but in suc- 

 cessive generations, each being bom a shade different 

 from its progenitors. Hence to observe such a change 

 is excluded by the very terms of the question. Does 

 Mr. Saville forget Mr. Herbert Spencer's apologue 

 of the ephemeron which had never witnessed the 

 change of a child into a man ? " 



The apologue, I may say in passing, is not Mr. 

 Spencer's ; it is by the author of the " Vestiges," and 

 will be found on p. 161 of the 1853 edition of that 

 book ; but let this pass. How impatient Professor Ray 

 Lankester is of any attempt to call attention to the 

 older view of evolution appears perhaps even more 

 plainly in a review of this same book of Professor 

 Semper 's that appeared in "Nature," March 3, 1881. 

 The tenor of the remarks last quoted shows that though 

 what I am about to quote is now more than five years 



