father's house on Paddington Green I met him two or three times. He was so good as to send me that wonderfully clever and original book, and also his less known satirical religious story, "The Fair Haven," which was reviewed with approval by some of the Church newspapers as a genuine piece of biography, which it purports to be. He also sent me "Life and Habit," and "Evolution Old and New," both of which I reviewed in Nature in the year 1879. The former is a wonderfully ingenious, brilliant, and witty application of the theory of Haeckel and others, that every animal cell, or even every organic molecule, is an independent conscious organism, with its likes and dislikes, its habits and instincts like the higher animals. He explains instincts as inherited memories, which, at the time he wrote, was a permissible hypothesis, but is now almost universally rejected as implying the inheritance of acquired characters, which all the available evidence is opposed to. The book, however, is well worth reading for its extreme ingenuity, logical arrangement, and all-pervading wit and humour.

The other work is a very full and careful exposition of the doctrines, as regards evolution, of Buffon, Lamarck, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Mr. Patrick Matthew, and some more recent writers, with copious quotations from their works, and an attempt to show not only that their views were of the same general nature as those of Darwin, but were also of equal if not greater importance. After reading the volume I wrote the following letter to the author, which may be of interest to those naturalists who either have not seen the work or who have forgotten its essential features.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"Waldron Edge, Duppas Hill, Croydon, "May 9, 1879.

"Please accept my thanks for the copy of 'Evolution Old and New,' and of 'Life and Habit,' which you were so good as to send me.

"I have just finished reading the former with mixed feelings of pleasure and regret. I am glad that a connected

account of the views of Buffon, Dr. Darwin, and Lamarck, and especially of Mr. Patrick Matthew, should be given to the world; but I am sorry that you should have, as I think, so completely failed in a just estimation of the value of their work as compared with that of Mr. Charles Darwin,-because it will necessarily prejudice naturalists against you, and will cause Life and Habit' to be neglected; and this I should greatly regret.

"To my mind, your quotations from Mr. Patrick Matthew are the most remarkable things in your whole book, because he appears to have completely anticipated the main ideas both of the 'Origin of Species' and of 'Life and Habit.'

"I should have to write a long article to criticize your book (which perhaps I may do). In your admiration of Lamarck you do not seem to observe that his views are all pure conjecture, utterly unsupported by a single fact. Where has it been proved that, in any one case, desires have caused variation? It is pure theory, with no fact to support it. And even if desires might, in a long course of generations, produce some effect, it can be demonstrated that in the same time 'natural selection' or 'survival of the fittest' would produce so much greater an effect as to overpower the other unless the two worked together.

"I am sorry to see also much that seems to me mere verbal quibbles. For instance, at p. 388 (last par.) you turn spontaneous variability' into 'unknown causes,' and then, of course, make nonsense of Mr. Darwin's words. In this way I will undertake to make nonsense of any argument. 'Spontaneous variability' is a FACT, FACT, as explained, for example, in my review of Mr. Murphy's book (along with yours) in Nature. It is an absolutely universal fact in the organic world (and for all I know in the inorganic too) and is probably a fundamental fact, due to the impossibility of any two organisms ever having been subjected to exactly identical conditions, and the extreme complexity both of organisms and their environment. This normal variability wants no other explanation. Its absence is inconceivable, because it would imply that diversity of conditions produced identity of

Here's another

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fonte deaf-hong in a sky paktowe - batte & let that toucher der Land Then the Bell Rings – & duld Cut – not Bill-i-core- but considered the Bell of the

boosey _ hope she get der Bell-infall!

MY LAST LETTER FROM DR. PURLAND.

result. The wishes or actions of individuals may be one of the causes of variability, but only one out of myriads. Now to say that such an universal fact as this cannot be taken as a basis of reasoning because the exact causes of it are unknown in each case, is utterly illogical. The causes of gravitation, of electricity, of heat, of all the forces of nature are unknown. Can we not, then, reason on them, and explain other phenomena by them, without having the words known causes' substituted, and thus making nonsense?

un

"I am no blind admirer of Mr. Darwin, as my works show; but I must say your criticism of him in your present work completely fails to reach him.

"The mere fact that Lamarck's views, though well put before the world for many years by Sir Charles Lyell (and other writers) converted no one, while Darwin has converted almost all the best naturalists in Europe, is a pretty good proof that the one theory is more complete than the other. "Yours very faithfully,

In Nature (June 12) I reviewed this book more fully, showing by numerous quotations how completely Mr. Butler has failed to grasp the essential features of natural selection, while a large portion of his criticism of Mr. Darwin's work is purely verbal and altogether erroneous and misleading. I received no reply either to my letter or to the review.

When I was at Montreal in 1887, Mr. Iles, the manager of the Windsor Hotel in that city, called my attention to a most humorous critical rhapsody which Mr. Butler had written after his recent visit to Canada and sent to the Spectator. As I do not think it has appeared elsewhere, and is a good example of his fantastic genius, I here give it from a copy furnished me by Mr. Iles.

A PSALM OF MONTREAL.

[The city of Montreal is one of the most rising and, in many respects, most agreeable on the American continent, but its inhabitants are as yet too busy with commerce to care greatly about the