1883.] Analyses of Books. 295 
that little can be said concerning him which has not been to 
some extent anticipated. We have, therefore, the greater plea- 
sure in recognising in Mr. Meldola’s “ Address” certain points 
which may usefully engage our attention. He accentuates 
especially the fadt that Darwin was “ a field naturalist as dis- 
tinguished from a museum naturalist,” — in fadt, a magnified and 
intensified type of the class of whom Gilbert White was one of 
the earlier representatives. Experiment and observation were 
his very life, living plants and animals were always appealed to 
if possible. We must here quote a suggestive note of the 
author’s ; — “The difficulties besetting the experimental investi- 
gator are forcibly recalled to my mind by a remark once made to 
me by Mr. Darwin. Speaking on this subjedt, I said that 
Nature when thus questioned often gives an evasive answer, to 
which he replied, * She will tell you a diredt lie if she can.’ ” 
Such being the state of the case we have need of all methods of 
research, diredt and indiredt, of experiment and observation modi- 
fied in every conceivable way, that the one may check the other. 
Whoever, therefore, would deprive us of any one method seeks 
to cripple, if not to arrest, our progress. It is idle for him to say 
that other methods yet remain to us. We cannot fly with one 
wing ; we want both. 
Passing from these considerations, the bearing of which can 
scarcely be misinterpreted, we come to a very just remark. Mr, 
Meldola declares it surprising how much the Darwinian theory 
is still misunderstood by the general public. “Ask any non- 
scientific person what he imagines to be conveyed by the word 
Darwinism, and he will probably tell you that it is the theory 
that man is descended from a monkey, which is about as explicit 
as saying that the Newtonian theory of gravitation is something 
to do with an apple.” Nay, as he goes on to show, there are 
many extreme specialists in Science who vaguely accept the 
Evolution theory in words, and yet have no conception of its 
pradlical importance. It is with them a dead formula to which 
they bow, not a principle animating their studies. These mis- 
conceptions — or rather misrepresentations — Mr. Meldola com- 
bats with a clearness calculated to ensure convidtion. The 
Address before us, brief as it necessarily is, maybe safely recom- 
mended as a preliminary study for outsiders who wish to know 
for themselves what Darwinism really is, before attacking longer 
and more elaborate treatises. 
