312 Editors' Table. [April, 



bones for the insertion of muscles; are the consequences of nutri- 

 tive and formative excitation, transmitted by heredity." In this 

 position Professor Raymond is in strict accord with the American 

 school of evolutionists. He then goes on to say: "It is neces- 

 sary to admit along with development by use, development by 

 natural selection, and that for three reasons. First, there are 

 innumerable adaptations — I cite only those known as mimetic 

 coloration — which appear to be only explicable by natural selec- 

 tion, and not by use. Second, plants which are, in their way, as 

 well adapted to their environment as animals, are of course inca- 

 pable of activity. Thirdly, we need the doctrine of natural 

 selection to explain the origin of the capacity for exercise itself. 

 Unless we admit that which it is impossible to do from a scien- 

 tific standpoint, that designed structures have a mechanical ori- 

 gin, it is necessary to conclude that in the struggle for existence, 

 the victory has been secured by those living beings who in exer- 

 cising their natural functions have increased, by chance (" par 

 hasard") their capacity for these functions more than others, and 

 that the beings thus favored have transmitted their fortunate gifts, 

 to be still further developed by their descendants." In these 

 three propositions, Professor Raymond still clings to the obscuri- 

 ties of the Darwinians, though Darwin himself is not responsible 

 for them. 



To take up first the second and third of these propositions. 

 Professor Raymond does not for the moment remember that 

 movement (or use) is an attribute of all life in its simplest forms, 

 and that the sessile types of life, both vegetable and animal, 

 must, in view of the facts, be regarded as a condition of degener- 

 ation. It is scarcely to be doubted that the primordial types of 

 vegetation were all free swimmers, and that their habit of build- 

 ing cellulose and starch, is responsible for their early-assumed 

 stationary condition. Their protoplasm is still in motion in the 

 limited confines of their walls of cellulose. The movements of 

 primitive plants have doubtless modified their structure to the 

 extent of their duration and scope, and probably laid slightly 

 varied foundations on which automatic nutrition has built widely 

 diverse results. We may attribute the origin of the forms of the 

 vegetable kingdom to three kinds of motion which have acted in 

 conjunction with the physical environment ; first, their primordial 

 free movements ; second, the intracellular movements of proto- 

 plasm ; third, the movements of insects, which have doubtless 

 modified the structure of the floral organs. Of the forms thus 

 produced, the fit have survived and the unfit have been lost, and 

 that is what natural selection has had to do with it. 



The origin of mimetic coloration, like many other things, is yet 

 unknown. An orthodox Darwinian attributes it to " natural selec- 

 tion," which turns out, on analysis, to be "hasard." The survival 

 of useful coloration is no doubt the result of natural selection. 



