first edition (p. 102): "Within a confined area, with some place in its polity not so perfectly occupied as might be, natural selection will always tend to preserve all the individuals varying in the right direction." In the sixth edition (p. 80) this passage runs as follows after the word "polity": "All the individuals varying in the right direction, though in different degrees, will tend to be preserved."

In his letter to Professor Moritz Wagner he wrote (1876): "In my opinion the greatest error which I have committed has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the environment, i.e., food, climate, etc., independently of Natural Selection. When I wrote the Origin and for some years afterwards, I could find little good evidence of the direct action of the environment; now there is a large body of evidence."*

There would seem to be no doubt that it was in consequence of his ecological investigations into the uses involving adaptations of structures for special purposes, e.g., of climbing, insect fertilisation, etc., that led him to this important change of view.

Darwin alludes to "all the individuals (say of plant seedlings) varying alike." Such is always the case and none have the requisite "injurious characters" for natural selection to eliminate. What, then, supplies its supposed use in destroying the vast majority of offspring? It is what Darwin called "fortuitous destruction." Of a million or more eggs of an oyster, Sir E. Ray Lankester tells us that perhaps one only is "lucky enough" to fall on a suitable spot whereon to grow into an oyster; all the rest are eaten by fishes, etc., or fall on unsuitable ground. It is obvious, therefore, that there can be no "fittest to survive." And if the above be true of one oyster, we are led to infer that it is true of all.

Yet there are varieties among oysters, e.g., in the Baltic with less salt in the water the shell assumes a different form. There are also small and large varieties; presumably, therefore, they were the "definite results" of the direct action of different environments, including different kinds of food.

This alternative explanation of Darwin's has been amply established as the true one.‡ The theory of "Natural

Life and Letters, III, p. 159.

+ Origin, etc., sixth edition, p. 64.

Injurious" means "inadaptive."

I called it the TRUE DARWINISM, see The Nineteenth Century, Nov.,

1906, p. 795.

Selection" and "Self-adaptation are mutually exclusive. In fact the former has really no facts whereon to base it, only assumptions.

In conclusion, how do we now stand with regard to Evolution by the Directivity of Life?

1. Far more offspring are born than can possibly live. The majority perish by fortuitous destruction.

2. As long as there is no change in the environment, the species remains unchanged; the slight individual differences occurring in all organisms are of no account, as a rule, in species-making.

3. By emigration or transference to a different environment, all the offspring of the same kind, if any change is necessary, change accordingly; the adaptations appearing during growth to the adult stage.

4. If such changed organisms live for a sufficient number of generations under the same conditions in which their variations were evolved; then, if they be restored to the old environment or to some other new one, the variations may be hereditary and mostly are permanent; and Evolution will be thoroughly established, without the aid of Natural Selection.

DISCUSSION.

The Rev. A. IRVING, D.Sc., B.A., proposed a hearty vote of thanks to Professor Henslow for what might perhaps be considered, from the scientific side, the most important paper read before the Institute during this session. He thought it would be found to answer the criticisms of those who had attacked his views as to

(a) the truth of Evolution as a theory (within its proper limits); (b) the necessity of recognising directivity as a factor of Evolution. itself. The speaker quoted the words of Professor Henslow's paper (p. 248):

"I assume that every one present is a believer in Evolution, though, like myself, he may not accept Darwinism, i.e., Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, to account for Evolution."

The author of the paper had confined himself to the strictly scientific side of the question, and had thus placed the whole matter

in a masterly way before those who (with some knowledge of palæontology) were capable of following his arguments. He understood the Professor to use the term "man" (on p. 248) as connoting only his physical organism, the mere homo, as the crown and summit of the fauna of this planet, while, at the same time, recognizing that the term man (in the sense of Scripture and Philosophy) connoted a vast deal more, as he had himself contended in his published writings for years past.

Thought on this matter had moved on so far since Darwin's Origin of Species by Natural Selection appeared, that the speaker found himself in entire agreement with Professor Henslow in his statement (p. 255) that the theory of "Natural Selection" and that of "Self-adaptation" were mutually exclusive, and that to the theory of self-adaptation "Directivity" is absolutely essential. He further pointed out that Sir E. Ray Lankester's illustration from the multiplicity of the eggs of the oyster (p. 254) had its parallel in the plant-world in the tremendous waste of pollen of the conifers, which was a matter of common observation to those who lived in the heart of the pinewood country, giving rise to the phenomenon known by the natives as "sulphur-rain." In connexion with the remarks (on p. 249) on protoplasm as "the physical basis of life," the speaker reminded the meeting of Professor Burden Sanderson's remark in his Presidential Address to the British Association (Nottingham Meeting, 1893) that "in another sense life may be said to be the basis of protoplasm," a thesis which still holds the field.

Mr. ARTHUR W. SUTTON said: I fully appreciate the responsibility of responding to the Chairman's request that I should say a few words in reference to this most interesting paper we have just listened to.

Forty years ago I had the privilege, with my friend Mr. Martin L. Rouse, who is present to-day, of sitting under Professor Henslow when he was Professor of Botany and Geology at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. Since that time the Professor, who was then master of these subjects, has been continually accumulating knowledge in the pursuit of Natural Science; my time has been spent in the study of plants themselves and their surroundings, under ordinary conditions of culture.

May I mention that it was extremely difficult in the five minutes.

allowed me to offer any adequate remarks in reference to a paper which has taken more than an hour to read, and is so exhaustive in its details. I am extremely grateful to our Secretary for allowing me to revise and supplement what I said at the meeting.

Evolution. At the outset I much regret that Professor Henslow has used the term "Evolution" as descriptive of, or to denote, such modifications of plants or adaptations in plants as may be due to the change of environment.

I doubt very much whether any two persons in this meeting understand precisely the same thing by the term "Evolution," but I am quite certain that nine out of ten of those present, if not more, understand that by the word "Evolution " is meant some progress or development from a lower or more rudimentary organism to another which is higher and more complex. I have not the slightest hesitation in affirming that in no single instance among the many examples to which the Professor has called our attention by the drawings and specimens submitted to us, is there the slightest evidence that the changes he claims to be due to changed environment have resulted in any advance from a lower to a higher organism or from a relatively simple to a more complex one. If this is so, the term "Evolution," as almost universally understood, is incorrectly applied to such changes as the Professor considers have been produced by change of environment.

The word "modification," or even "mutation," although the latter has acquired another and distinctive meaning, would be more suitable and more correct.

Page 248, paragraph 1. I question whether the accumulation of coincidences is sufficient to establish any probability as a fact, because further "inferences, deductions, and hypotheses" may entirely alter our attitude towards these coincidences.

Page 248, paragraph 2. Professor Henslow says that "the ultimate origin or Final Cause of both Matter and Physical Force are unknowable to Science." I much prefer to take the view of A. Russel Wallace, the earlier but joint author of Darwin's theory of "Natural Selection," who most definitely asserts that Science demands the recognition, and therefore the knowledge, of an Intelligent Being as the Final-or rather the First-Cause of the phenomena of Physical Force. Without an initial act of creation followed also by subsequent creative acts, Wallace is unable to see

how any process of Evolution could overcome the otherwise insuperable barriers which would oppose themselves to the upward course of Evolution.

Page 248, line 18. No experiments exist which in the slightest degree prove the "Evolution" of Man or other living beings, and the "coincidences" upon which the induction rests relating to such "Evolution" of Human Beings or animals, or even of plants, give no warrant for assuming that such evolution is established " as a fact." Consequently, I do not admit that either have been "incontestably and permanently established"; and "Evolution remains, as it has always been, an hypothesis and nothing more.

Page 248, paragraph 4. To start with the assumption that Life has been endowed with the capacity of directing the physical forces of nature is unsatisfying to our intelligence; this involves the further. assumption that as there are infinite varieties of life, each one has been endowed with the capacity of directing the lifeless forces of nature so as to build up the structures of that infinite variety of plant and animal life which we observe around us. It is manifest that Life, unless itself directed, could never, through the ages which have passed, succeed in forming the varied structures of the countless forms of plant life, tree life, bird life, animal life, or marine life.

Page 249, paragraph 3. Professor Henslow says that "the inference of a very wide deduction is that the Cause lies in the direct action of the external conditions of life to which the plant responds." I would submit that if the Cause of Adaptation or Modification lies in the external conditions of life, i.e., Environment, it does not lie or consist in life itself; and if this is so, this paragraph entirely contradicts the second paragraph on this page, where we are told "we must look to Life alone as being endowed with the capacity of directing the lifeless forces of nature."

Page 249, line 15. I maintain that for the word "Evolution should be substituted "Variation or Modification of Form."

Page 249, line 17. I must deny that Self-adaptation is the "Origin of Species," for there is no evidence that any one of the many instances mentioned or of the specimens submitted, where specific difference is apparent, is the result of changed environment; for though it is so evident that plants, in some or many respects similar, have different characteristics when found growing under different con