SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



— Nature for Sept. 28th, publishes, in full, a translation of the 

 eloquent address of Professor Haeckel, at the Eisenach meeting 

 of the German naturalists and physicians. After paying tribute 

 •to Darwin's theory of natural selection and the wide influence it 

 has exerted on human thought, also giving his personal impres- 

 sions of Darwin, when he first visited him in 1866, he then en- 

 deavors, and with good success, to prove that Goethe was an 

 evolutionist. Haeckel then gives very full credit to the views of 

 Lamarck, whose merits have been quite kept in the dark by some 

 English Darwinians. " We cannot." says Haeckel, "but regard it 

 as a truly tragic fact, that the ' Philosophic Zoologique,' by La- 

 marck, one of the greatest productions of the great literary period 

 in the beginning of our century, met, from its outset, with but 

 extremely little attention, and in the course of a few years was 

 utterly forgotten. Not till Darwin, fifty years later on, breathed 

 new life into the transformation theory therein established, was 

 the buried treasure again brought into the light of day, and we 

 cannot now but describe it as the completest representation of 

 the theory of development prior to the time of Darwin." 



Haeckel's monistic views, as he states them in this address, 

 appear to be nearly identical with the agnosticism of Herbert 

 Spencer— " that purest monistic form of faith," says Haeckel, 

 "which attains its climax in the conviction of the unity of God and 

 nature:' The further advances we make in the knowledge of 

 nature — " the more we approach that unattainable, ultimate 

 ground— the purer will be our idea of God." 



Haeckel then explains his views, uttered five years ago, as to 

 the teaching of Darwinism in the lower schools, which had been 

 misunderstood. " It stands to reason with these words I could not 

 mean to claim that Darwinism should be taught in elementary 



That is simply impossible. 





mathematics and physics, or the history of philosophy, Darwinism 

 demands a mass of previous knowledge which can be acquired 

 only in the higher stages of learning. Assuredly, however, we 

 may demand that all subjects of education be treated according 

 to the genetic method, and that the fundamental idea of the devel- 

 opment theory, the causality of phenomena, finds everywhere its 

 acknowledgment. 



— We have to announce the death of the Hon. B. B. Redding, 

 State FishCommissioner of California, a patron of science, and him- 

 self possessed of no small scientific attainments, who died suddenly 

 of apoplexy at his residence in San Francisco, on the morning of 

 August 2 1 st. Mr. Redding was born at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, 

 in 1824, and was the son of the U. S. Consul at that place. In 

 1849, he started for California in the brig Mary Jane, and after 

 some interesting experiences in the Galapagos, reached San Fran- 



