Professor Lankester and Lamarck 227 
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 
page 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 old, it may be taken as still giving us the position 
which Professor Ray Lankester takes on these matters. 
He wrote :— 
“It is necessary,” he exclaims, “ to plainly and emphati- 
cally state ”’ (Why so much emphasis ? Why not “it should 
be stated’ ?) ‘‘ that Professor Semper and a few other 
writers of similar views ’’* (I have sent for the number of 
“‘ Modern Thought ” referred to by Professor Ray Lankester 
but find no article by Mr. Henslow, and do not, therefore, 
know what he had said) “ are not adding to or building on 
Mr. Darwin’s theory, but are actually opposing all that is 
essential and distinctive in that theory, by the revival of the 
exploded notion of ‘ directly transforming agents’ advo- 
cated by Lamarck and others.” 
' It may be presumed that these writers know they are 
not “ adding to or building on” Mr. Darwin’s theory, and 
do not wish to build on it, as not thinking it a sound 
foundation. Professor Ray Lankester says they are 
“actually opposing,” as though there were something 
intolerably audacious in this ; but it is not easy to see why 
he should be more angry with them for “actually opposing ’’ 
* E.g. the Rev. George Henslow, in ‘‘ Modern Thought,” vol. ii., 
No. 5, 1881. 
