226 Luck, or Cunning ? 
Lamarckism looks all very well on paper, but, as Professor 
Semper’s book shows, when put to the test of observation 
and experiment it collapses absolutely.” 
I should have thought it would have been enough if it 
had collapsed without the “ absolutely,” but Professor 
Ray Lankester does not like doing things by halves. Few 
will be taken in by the foregoing quotation, except those 
who do not greatly care whether they are taken in or not ; 
but to save trouble to readers who may have neither 
Lamarck nor Professor Semper at hand, I will put the case 
as follows :— 
Professor Semper writes a book to show, we will say, that 
the hour-hand of the clock moves gradually forward, in 
spite of its appearing stationary. He makes his case suf- 
ficiently clear, and then might have been content to leave 
it ; nevertheless, in the innocence of his heart, he adds 
the admission that though he had often looked at the clock 
for a long time together, he had never been able actually 
to see the hour-hand moving. “‘ There now,” exclaims 
Professor Ray Lankester on this, ‘‘ I told you so ; the theory 
collapses absolutely ; his whole object and desire is to show 
that 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 Ray Lankester 
has been above quoted as saying about Lamarckism beyond 
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 thread- 
bare objection that the ‘supporters of the theory have 
never yet succeeded in observing a single instance in all 
the millions of years invented (!) in its support of one 
species of animal turning into another.’ Now, ex hypothesi, 
one species turns into another not rapidly, asina transforma- 
tion scene, but in successive generations, each being born 
a shade different from its progenitors. Hence to observe 
