of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the "Origin of
Species," at the suggestion of the Cambridge Philosophical Society,
the University Press published during the current year a volume
entitled "Darwin and Modern Science," edited by Mr. A. C. Seward,
Professor of Botany in the University. Of the twenty-nine essays by
men of science of the highest distinction, one is of peculiar
interest to the readers of Samuel Butler: "Heredity and Variation in
Modern Lights," by Professor W. Bateson, F.R.S., to whose work on
"Discontinuous Variations" we have already referred. Here once more
Butler receives from an official biologist of the first rank full
recognition for his wonderful insight and keen critical power. This
is the more noteworthy because Bateson has apparently no faith in the
transmission of acquired characters; but such a passage as this would
have commended itself to Butler's admiration:-


"All this indicates a definiteness and specific order in heredity,
and therefore in variation. This order cannot by the nature of the
case be dependent on Natural Selection for its existence, but must be
a consequence of the fundamental chemical and physical nature of
living things. The study of Variation had from the first shown that
an orderliness of this kind was present. The bodies and properties
of living things are cosmic, not chaotic. No matter how low in the
scale we go, never do we find the slightest hint of a diminution in
that all-pervading orderliness, nor can we conceive an organism
existing for one moment in any other state."


We have now before us the materials to determine the problem of
Butler's relation to biology and to biologists. He was, we have