1889.] Editor's Table. 137 
whole." But in spite of these statements we are to believe 
that if a plant or animal acquires a useful addition to or mort- 
ification of its structure during life, this is the particular varia- 
tion which will 7iot be transmitted. Since the modifications 
acquired by use during life are necessarily useful, it seems that 
according to the Post-Darwinians, the only way of acquiring 
useful variations known to us, is excluded from the process of 
Organic evolution. To say the least of it, the doctrine of 
probabilities is severely taxed by such a position as this. 
But we say further, with Professor Cunningham, that were 
this hypothesis true, there should have been no evolution. If 
acquisition during life-time, is to render a character non trans- 
missible, the continued growth of a single character by accre- 
tions during successive generations through geological ages 
could not and ought not to occur. Each generation should 
begin where its ancestors began in the matter of useful charac- 
ters, or those acquired by use, so that there could be no accu- 
mulation or development of such characters. The influence of 
the environment, as well as that of the energies of the living 
being, would be incompetent to develop more in a given gener- 
ation than that generation could acquire in its single life-time. 
How then can evolution account for the law so beautifully dis- 
displayed by paleontology, of the gradual modification of parts 
through long geological ages, towards given ideals of mechan- 
ical perfection ? How can we account for the gradual per- 
fecting of the articulations of the internal and external skele- 
tons of forms which possess them ? Not only is no explana- 
tion offered the Post- Darwinian school, but such progress is 
under their hypothesis, impossible. It is an explanation of 
obscurus per obscurius. But we are still of the opinion, in spite 
of Weissman's theory to the contrary, that so long as the germ 
plasma is subject to nutrition, it is subject to influences occur- 
ing during the adult life of an animal, and it would be an ex- 
ception to all the other tissues were it not so.—E. D. C. 
A graceful tribute to the memory of Priestly, was recently 
paid by the first Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. A tablet 
