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NATURE NOTES. 
“SCIENCE” UP TO DATE.* 
Mr. Edward Clodd and Mr. Grant Allen are lucky beyond their fellows. For 
them there are no gaps in our knowledge, no weak points in our hypotheses. 
What for a Darwin or a Wallace is an abiding mystery is for them crystal clear, 
and they can, with the utmost confidence, expound the whole history of things 
which men who have spent their lives in research would give a king’s ransom to 
know. Calling their accounts each a “story,” they naturally claim the im- 
memorial privilege of the story-teller, and with the consummation to be reached 
ever in view, arrange all the details of their plot accordingly. The plan has 
obvious advantages, and it might not be easy by any other method to accomplish 
many of the feats that they achieve. Thus, Mr. Clodd, anxious to impress us 
with the profound truth that we are the brethren of apes, presents us with the 
portraits of a pair of our simian ancestors — Pithecanthropus alatus is their sound- 
ing name — in whom all the various problems attaching to the question have been 
lightly brushed away by the facile pencil of the draughtsman. We find the naked 
back, the opposable thumb, the just proportion of limbs, the erect posture, and 
other features, the genesis of which has been such a puzzle, all united in this 
aspiring pair. The female has even lost all hair on the face, while stubbly 
whiskers and moustachios sufficiently mark the male as the remote ancestor of 
Lord Dundreary. Mr. Clodd, however, omits to tell us that not only have no 
traces of such creatures been discovered, but that no indications are afforded by 
the monkeys, living or extinct, with which we are acquainted, furnishing evidence 
of any tendency tow’ards so remarkable a type. 
What Mr. Grant Allen has to tell of flowers is not exactly new to us, for he 
has related the same story in all the many volumes which he has produced on the 
subject. lie, likewise, is perfectly sure that he knows all about every process 
through which the present condition of things has come to be, but we cannot say 
that we think him equally fortunate in his descriptions of them as they actually 
are. He repeats, for example, what we can only call his preposterous account of 
the method in which the cuckoo-pint, or common arum, employs flies for its 
fertilization : how these creep into its spathe in search of a sweet liquor there 
distilled : how they cannot creep out again because of the “ lobster pot” hairs 
which guard the entrance : how, to console themselves for their captivity, they 
“roll and revel” in the flood of sweet juices provided: how they get dusted 
over with pollen, and when the blossom withers and the obstructive hairs shrivel 
up, make their escape to fertilize another arum. This pretty history is as purely 
an imaginative product as the portrait of Pithecanthropus himself. Anyone who, 
next May, will take the trouble to gather an arum and hold it upside down will 
find that the flies inside tumble out quite irrespective of the hairs, and if the 
blossom be an old one he will find that the insects are dead and half-digested 
by their carnivorous entertainer. 
In a word, we cannot understand what useful purpose is to be served by such 
books. Readers are, on the one hand, beguiled into believing that we know much 
which is utterly unknown, and, on the other hand, they are taught, instead of 
using their eyes to find out how Nature acts, to sketch out a mode of procedure, 
which, if she were “ scientific,” she should have followed. 
J. G. 
* The Story of Primitive Man, by Edward Clodd, 198 pp. ; The Story of the 
Plants, by Grant Allen, 232 pp. (London : George Newnes, 1895. Price is. 
each.) 
