EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 275 
dogmas. The modern historian is now as much an evolutionist 
as the biologist, but his facts are more limited in time; he 
cannot precede man; the biologist goes back to a hoary antiquity. 
Our space will not allow us to follow Dr. Gamble throughout. 
We will confine ourselves to his discussion on the colour of 
animals. His views on “‘ sympathetic coloration in animals” is 
in the main what others have expressed by ‘‘assimilative” or 
“environmental” coloration. He gives some valid reasons against 
our regarding colour as produced solely for protective purposes. 
Observers have been led ‘‘to seek in protection the entire signi- 
ficance of cryptic colouring; to regard the avoidance of enemies 
or the near approach of prey as the reason for its existence ; 
whilst to those who are not close observers the general vague 
resemblance between animals and their surroundings is illogically 
regarded as explicable for the same reason. Butif we look back 
on the history of animal coloration . . . we realize that the pig- 
ments of animals are older than the effect they produce, and that 
the old nutritive, purifying, and respiratory uses of colour are 
the basis for the more recently evolved protective, warning, or 
mimetic values of coloration.” 
The volume is usefully illustrated, but the title ‘ Animal 
Life’ has been already used by Jordan and Kellogg for a similar 
work published in 1901, and noticed in our volume for that year - 
(p. 275). 


Eee OR WA GLEAN ING: S: 
In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the famous joint 
communication by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, “On 
the Tendency of Species to form Varieties, and on the Perpetuation 
of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection,” a special 
meeting of the Linnean Society of London was held on July Ist at 
the Institution of Civil Engineers in Great George Street. The 
President of the Society, Dr. Dukinfield H. Scott, occupied the chair, 
and there was present a large and distinguished company representa- 
tive of learned and scientific societies, as well as the Danish and 
Swedish Ministers, and the following members of the Darwin family : 
—Sir George and Lady Darwin, Dr. Francis Darwin, Major Leonard 
Darwin, and Mr. William Darwin. ‘There were also present Dr. 
Alfred Russel Wallace, whose name is inseparably associated with 
that of Darwin in the great event which provided the occasion for 

