wild Indians did not equal them in the sharpness of their senses.[1] On the other hand, as the result of the 'Report of the Anthropometric Committee, British Association, 1881,' Mr. Roberts stated that the figures gave no support to the belief that savages possess better sight than civilized peoples, and spoke of "the common mistake of travellers in confounding acuteness of vision with the results of special training or education of the faculty of seeing, results which," as he remarked, "are quite as much dependent on mental training as in the use of the eyes." As pointed out by Haeckel, our own eyes are subject to the law of divergent adaptation. "If, for example, a naturalist accustoms himself always to use one eye for the microscope... then that eye will acquire a power different from that of the other.... The one eye will become short-sighted, and better suited for seeing things near at hand; the other eye becomes, on the contrary, more long-sighted, more acute for looking at an object in the distance. If, on the other hand, the naturalist alternately uses both eyes for the microscope, he will not acquire the shortsightedness of the one eye, and the compensating degree of long sight in the other, which is attained by a wise distribution of these different functions of sight between the two eyes."[2] And so, even at the risk of being accused of rank Lamarckism,[3] may
- ↑ Cf. 'Descent of Man,' 2nd ed. pp. 33–4.
- ↑ 'History of Creation,' 4th ed. vol. i. p. 269.
- ↑ By many evolutionists who advocate Darwinism as sanctioned by Weismannism, it has recently become the vogue to not only decry Lamarck, but to denounce what they consider as the Lamarckian heresy. Not only have his views been condemned and ridiculed, but even his honesty has been called in question. Thus a recent writer, after remarking on the extraordinary coincidence of the independent conception of "Natural Selection" by Darwin and Wallace, cannot adopt the same view as to some coincidences in the writings of Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin; and although the first named, in his 'Animaux sans Vertébres,' states that his theory is the first that has been presented, this does not satisfy the suspicions of his critic, who writes:—"But if Lamarck borrowed without acknowledgment, it would be but a small step further to write the passage in question" ('Nature,' vol. lii. p. 362). Prof. Osborn, in his 'From the Greeks to Darwin,' has examined, discussed, and reduced this imputation to the character of "unproved slander." How different is the verdict of one well able to judge. Huxley writes of "the famous naturalist Lamarck, who possessed a greater acquaintance with the lower forms of life than any man of his day, Cuvier not excepted, and was a good botanist to boot" ('Collected
