424 TJw American Naturalist. 



[M:,, 



tioned by the latter." As to the word " progressive," I take up that 

 question below ; but as to the analogy with structural evolution, two 

 answers occur to me. In the first place, Prof. Cope is, as I said, 

 the very man who holds that all structural evolution is secured by 

 direct conscious adaptations. He says : " mind determines movements 

 and movements have determined structure or form." If this be true 

 how can psychic be conditioned by structural evolution ? Would not 

 rather the structural changes depend upon the psychic ability of the 

 creature to effect adaptations? And then, second, at this point Prof. 

 Cope assumes the Lamarkian factor in structural evolution. Later on 

 he makes the same assumption when he says : " But since the biologists 

 have generally repudiated Weismannism," etc. This is a curious say- 

 ing; for my impression is that even on the purely biological side, the 

 tendency is the other way. Lloyd Morgan has pretty well come over ; 

 Romanes took back before he died many of his arguments in favor of 

 the Lamarkian factor ; and here comes a paleontologist, Prof. Osborn, 

 —if he is correctly reported in Science, April 3rd, p. 530— to argue 

 against Prof. Cope on this very point with very much the same sort of 

 argument as this which I have made. 3 And while Prof. Cope will agree 

 with me that this sort of argumentum ex autoritate is not very convinc- 

 ing, yet he will not object to my balancing off his dictum with the fol- 

 lowing from a letter which just comes to me from another distinguished 

 biologist, Prof. Minot : " Neo-Lamarkism seems to me an impossible 



But Prof. Cope goes on to say that I " both admit and deny Weismann- 

 ism ;" on the ground that " his [my] denial of inheritance only covers 



3 Since writing this I have heard Prof. Osborn read a paper which confirms the 

 agreement between him and me which I supported in the text above. I reached 

 my conclusion independently and one of my Science articles gives report of it as 

 expressed in a criticism of Eomanes before the New York Academy of Science 

 on Jan. 31st, 1896. Prof. Osborns expression "ontogenic variations" i. e. those 

 brought out by •« environment (which includes all the atmospheric, chemical, 



seems to make these adaptations after all constitutional. As Prof. Osborn says 



tutional variations without the aid of intelligence would never suffice' (as Romanes 

 says) to keep the animal alive while correlated variations are being perfected 

 phylogenically. But it seems to answer perfectly where intelligent or other 

 adaptations supplement the constitutional variations— and that is just the point 

 made in my Science, paper. As to the way these ontogenic variations or adapta- 

 tions are brought about in the individual creature, see the remarks on * organic 

 selection " below. I am printing in the next issue of this journal (June) a full 



