BOTANICAL WORK OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 465 



But there are other and even more serious grounds why the present 

 dominance of one aspect of our subject is a matter for regret. In the 

 concluding chapter of the Origin, Darwin wrote: "I look with con- 

 fidence to the future — to young and rising naturalists." But I observe 

 that most of the new writers on the Darwinian theory, and, oddly 

 enough, especially when they have been trained at Cambridge, gener- 

 ally begin by more or less rejecting it as a theory of the origin of 

 species, and then proceed unhesitatingly to reconstruct it. The attempt 

 rarely seems to me successful, perhaps because the limits of the labor- 

 atory are unfavorable to the accumulation of the class of observations 

 which are suitable for the purpose. The laboratory, in fact, has not 

 contributed much to the Darwinian theory, except the Law of Kecapitu- 

 lation, and that, I am told, is going out of fashion. 



The Darwinian theory, being, as I have attempted to show, the out- 

 come of the natural history method, rested at every point on a copious 

 basis of fact and observation. This more modern speculation lacks. 

 The result is a revival of transcendentalism. Of this we have had a 

 copious crop in this country, but it is quite put in the shade by that 

 with which we have been supplied from America. Perhaps the most 

 remarkable feature is the persistent vitality of Lamarckism. As Dar- 

 win remarks : " Lamarck's one suggestion as to the cause of the gradual 

 modification of species — effort excited by change of conditions — was, 

 on the face of it, inapplicable to the whole vegetable world'" (II, 189). 

 And if we fall back on the inherited direct effect of change of condi- 

 tions, though Darwin admits that "physical conditions have a more 

 direct effect on plants than on animals" (II, 319), I have never been 

 able to convince myself that that effect is inherited. I will give one 

 illustration. The difference in habit of even the same species of plant 

 when grown under mountain and lowland conditions is a matter of gen- 

 eral observation. It would be difficult to imagine a case of "acquired 

 characters" more likely to be inherited. But this does not seem to be 

 the case. The recent careful research of Gaston Bonnier only confirms 

 the experience of cultivators. " The modifications acquired by the plant 

 when transported for a definite time from the plains to the Alps, or vice 

 versa, disappear at the end of the same period when the plant is 

 restored to its original conditions." (Ann. d. Sc. uat., 7 t1 ser. XX, 355.) 



Darwin, in an eloquent passage, which is too long for me to quote 

 (Origin, 426), has shown how enormously the interest of natural history 

 is enhanced "when we regard every production of nature as one which 

 has had a long history," and "when we contemplate every complex 

 structure - - - as the summing up of many contrivances." But 

 this can only be done, or at any rate begun, in the field, and not in the 

 laboratory. 



A more serious peril is the dying out amongst us of two branches of 

 botanical study in which we have hitherto occupied a position of no 

 small distinction. Apart from the staffs of our official institutions, 

 SM 95 30 



