1890.] Editorial. 49 
EDITORIAL. 
EDITORS, E. D. COPE AND J.S. KINGSLEY. 
OME interesting expressions of opinion as to the essential na- 
ture of organic evolution have been recently published in 
England. We refer to the addresses before the physiological and 
biological sections of the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Sciences, by Dr. Burdon Sanderson and Sir William 
Turner; to the book “Darwinism,” by Alfred Russel Wallace ; 
and to the review of the latter by Prof. E. Ray Lankester, which 
has just, appeared in ature. 
Dr. Burdon Sanderson distinguishes the functions of living 
beings into two divisions, growth and metabolism, which are the 
subject matter of two sciences, morphology and physiology. 
Evolution results from modification of growth, and as growth is 
really metabolism under some directive influence, it is interesting 
to note the aspect the subject presents to this able physiologist as 
expressed in the closing remarks of his address: “ The word life 
is used in physiology in what, if you like, may be called a techni- 
cal sense, and denotes only that state of change with permanence 
which I have endeavored to set forth to you. In this restricted 
sense of the word, therefore, the question, What is life? is one to 
which the answer is approachable, but I need not say that in a 
higher sense—higher because it appeals to higher faculties in our 
nature—the word suggests something outside of mechanism, . 
which may perchance be its cause rather than its effect.” 
Sir William Turner says: “To reject the influence which use 
and disuse of parts may exercise both on the individual and on his 
offspring, is like looking at an object with only a single eye. All 
biologists will, I suppose, accept the proposition that the individual 
soma is influenced or modified by its environment. Now, if on 
the basis of this proposition the theory be grafted that modifica- 
tions or variations thus produced are capable of so affecting the 
germplasm of the individual in whom the variation arises as to 
be transmitted to its offspring—and I have already given cases in 
point—then such variations might be perpetuated. If the modi- 
Am. Nat.—January.—4. 

