BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

Mataura Ensign, 9 November 1908, Page 3

BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

Mi DARWIN'S *PRESIDENTIAL. ADDRESS. DEFENCE OK IIIS FATHER'S THEORIES. , .Mr Francis Darwin, as president of ilio British As^ociatidu, assembled recently in Dublin, ill pleading for the doctrine of'the inheritance of acquired faculties, anticipated that lie might bo debcribed as championing a lust cause. 'Darwinism on tlie defensive' may best briefly ,summarise the substance of the presidential address," says the "Scotsman.' "In a long and learned treatise, Dr. Francis Darwin sought to establish the position that, despite the persistence ol certain ingenious eounterliypothcfcos. bis lalher's theory of natural selection still, alter lilty years, holds the fi"ld as tlie accepted explanation of the origin of species. ihe hostility of certain scientists, based oii the enormous accumulation of special investigations into the .subject of living organisms and its changes and developments is an interesting phenomenon. It is impossible here to explain m any detail lie particular import of the challenges offered to Darwinism by tlm Neo-Laniarkists, the Mutationists, and the Mendelists. I lie lirst school, led by tlie American palaeontologist Cope,' argue that, variations of species may lie wholly explained by the development of the organs of the individual and the influence of environfiient; the Mutation theory, of which Dr Hugo de Yries, of Amsterdam, is the protagonist, is that a new species is developed, not by slow degrees but by a bound, by means of some exceptional freak of production; Mendelism is briefly an argument that new species may result from hybridisation—in short, from what are known as "sports' ami 'lreaks' in nature, through tlie operation of successive generations. In all these directions there is a tendency to pick a r/uarrrel with the details rather than the main principle ol evolution as laid down bv Darwin. "Dr Darwin's address to'the British Association was in the main an answer to the acute criticisms of Weismanu. August A\eisuvaun's attack on Darwinism is not au affair of outposts; it goes to the centre of the theory, the transmission by heredity of 'aeijuired characters.' Darwin laid it down that under the influence of certain environments, the fittest survive, the unfit tend to be eliminated, and the survival is due to an adaptability to new conditions which, when shared by a sufficient number of individuals, constitutes through the sheer 'accumulative power of natural selection' a new species. Weismanu demands proof for the assertion that 'acquired characters' are capable of hereditary transmission. In popular phrase, he might be represented as asking whether the Irishman was justified in asserting that his wooden leg 'ran in the family.' "Ho holds that 'Ontogeny,' tlie development of tho individual germ, can only be changed by an alteration in tho original germ-cell, the first stage of being. He .denies the somatic inheritance, or bodily transmission of personal peculiarities. Mr Darwin's answer serves to emphasise a hypothesis that is not wholly new, but that has evidently been carefully developed by him in special investigations in the more recondite aspects of botanic science, and applied iiiferentiallv to biology generally. He pleads that habit or memory exists in the most elementary forms of living matter, in plants and the lowest forms of animal life. 'The tact thiil. plants must, lie classed with animals as regards their manlier ol reaction to stimuli has now become almost a commonplace of physiology,' lie said, "it is impossible to knou - vvliei.lier or mil plants are conscious," added Dr Darwin; "but it is consistent with the doctrine of continuity that in all living things there is something psychic, ami it we accept this point of view, we must believe that in plants there exists a faint copy ol what we know as consciousness in ourselves." "This theory," says the .'Scotsman,' "has been developed by himself and by Professor Solium. It starts with the plain tact that all organism is respon■sive to simuliis; ji proceeds on the prool hat the same stimulus, frequently applied, leaves a sort of record—an engram, in the phrase of Dr Semon—oii the organism, and this trace or record is; emphasised by repetition until it becomes characteristic. Thus the sunshine causes certain flowers to open; .vet if is found by experiment that sleeping plants which have acquired tlx l habit. o| acquaintance with tlie regular stimuli ol light and darkness wake up in the. mnming even if confined in a dark room, and fold their leaves again at night. "The nincmic theory is absolutely consistent with Darwinism ; it is aii ellort to meet Weismanu on his own ground, that is, in the vague region of genu cells, and their relations to ontogeny and phytogeny, the continuation of the individual and the race. It assumes a means of sympathetic communication between the soma and Hie germ cells. 'Some such telegraphy,' says Dr Darwin, 'is possible.' The mneniic theory takes the long view; and it rests oil tho main Darwinian hypothesis that somatic inheritance lies at the root of all evolution. If accepted. if will add aeons to the long story of evolution."