The Project Gutenberg eBook of The life and letters of George John Romanes, by George John Romanes

Hôtel Costebelle, Hyères: February 24, 1894.

Dear Mr. Henslow,—Nothing can be more clear than are all your letters, and the last one, I take it, sets at rest the only question which I had to ask. For it expressly answers that, in your own view, hypothesis of 'self-adaptation' is a statement rather than an explanation of the facts. Nevertheless, it is also to some certain extent advanced as an explanation on Lamarckian lines, for in your books (for which I much thank you) you attribute adaptive mechanism in flowers to thrusts, strains &c. caused by insects. But here, if I may say so, it does not seem to me that you sufficiently deal with an obvious criticism, viz. How is it so much as conceivable that protoplasm should always respond to insect irritation adaptively, when we look to the endless variety and often great elaboration of the mechanism? Similarly as regards the inorganic environment, Lamarck's hypothesis of use-inheritance (i.e. mere increase and decrease of parts as due to inherited efforts of greater or less development by altered flow of nutrition) was at least theoretically valid. But how can you extend this to structures which, though useful, are never active, so as to modify flow of nutrition, e.g. hard shells of nuts, soft pulp of fruits, &c.? Here it is that natural selection theory has the pull. And so of adaptive colours, odours, and secretions? I confess that, even accepting inheritance of acquired characters, I could conceive of 'self-adaptation' alone producing all such innumerable and diversified adjustments only by seeing with Newman (in his 'Apologia') an angel in every flower.

Besides, I do not see why you are shut up to this, even on your own principles. For surely, be there as much self-adaptation in Nature as ever you please, it would still be those individuals (or incipient types) which best respond to stimulation (i.e. most adaptively do so) that, other things equal, would survive in the struggle for existence, and so be naturally selected. In other words, I do not see why you should accept natural selection as regards 'vigour' of seedlings, and nowhere else.

I quite accept the validity of your criticism of my physiological selection in your book, supposing your 'self-adaptation' true to the extent you suppose. But otherwise what you say tells in favour of physiological selection, at least, excepting the statement as to new allied species originating as a rule on distant areas from parent types. This, however, is certainly an erroneous statement, though I should like to know how you came to make it.

I much wish I could write more or meet you. For, notwithstanding apparent bluntness (for brevity's sake), I see you are one of the few evolutionists who think for yourself.

With many thanks, yours very truly,

G. J. Romanes.

I am not against your criticism of natural selection, for I have always thought there must be some other additional principle of adaptation at work.

(A) I cry 'Peccavi' as regards natural selection co-operating with self-adaptation. Since you show that, even if it does, you are not concerned with this fact—i.e. of the development of the adaptation, but only with its origin.

(B) All the same, however, we must remember that where high elaboration of mechanism is concerned, the question as to the causes of its development become of more importance than those of its origin; e.g. even if self-adaptation be conceived capable of making a first step towards producing the exquisite mechanism of a bivalve shell, by discriminate variation, how is it conceivable that it should go on through the odd millions of successive steps of improvement needed to produce the perfect mechanism in which the great wonder of adaptation really occurs?

I can conceive of no natural process to accomplish this development even in one such case of mechanism other than natural selection. Let alone the 'endless variety' of elaborate mechanism elsewhere.

(C) Of course, if you could prove that indiscriminate variations have not occurred in wild plants, but only under cultivation, you would destroy Darwinism—in toto. But is the proposition credible a priori; or sustainable a posteriori, &c.?

I suppose you have read Wallace on the subject as regards wild animals, and if you were to make similar measurements with regard to wild plants, you would obtain analogous results.

I remember as a boy having a game of who could find most specimens of fern-leaved clover in a given time, or even two leaves of clover which would be exactly alike in all respects. But I have already discussed the matter of definite and indefinite variability in 'Darwin and after Darwin.'

(D) I will let the question of Use-Inheritance in relation to seemingly Passive Organs, go by default against me, as it is rather a side issue and would need much writing to discuss. The same applies to your remarks on Teleology. As regards both points I agree with your observations.

(E) Touching varieties as found in different areas from parent types, I suppose you heard how carefully Nägeli has gone into the subject, with the result that after making allowances for defects of isolation, change of environment, &c., only about five per cent. of species of plants seem to have originated on distant areas, while Wallace has shown that some such proportion applies to animals.

(F) As regards plants having been brought under cultivation, and yielding variations that prove heredity, I knew there were innumerable cases where artificial selection had been brought into play. But of course they are all out of court until the question on which you are engaged has been decided in your favour, i.e. until you have succeeded in disproving natural selection as analogous or parallel to artificial. It was for this reason I mentioned the case of parsnips, where the hereditary variations seem to have taken place in the first generation after transplanting, and therefore without leaving time for selection of any kind to have come into play.

Hôtel Costebelle, Hyères: March 29.

Dear Mr. Henslow,—I am still terribly ill and cannot write much. We must have a talk. Could you come to Oxford any day you like and be our guest? I think we might derive mutual benefit. I shall be there from the middle of April till I do not know when. Why not come on May 2, to hear Weismann give his lecture in the afternoon?

I much wish you would save seed of any fixed local varieties of plants you may find to be in seed, while you are in Malta (or bulbs), in order to see whether plants grown from them in England will or will not prove fully fertile. This is in relation to my own theory of physiological selection, according to which isolation produces segregation of type; in the same way as it does that of a language—viz. by prevention of intercourse with the parent type and consequently with an independent history of variation. Where the isolation is due to physical barriers (as at Malta) there is no need for any sexual differentiation to originate a species. But on common areas, sexual differentiation is the only means of securing the isolation. Therefore (I say) we can see why Jordan's French varieties all prove sterile with their parent forms, and I should expect your Malta varieties to prove fertile with theirs elsewhere.

G. J. R.

Costebelle: April 15, 1894.

Dear Mr. Henslow,—Yes, please write when you get back, suggesting any time you may find convenient for spending a day or two with us at 94 St. Aldate's, Oxford (immediately opposite Christ Church). I cannot talk long at a time, but I think the meeting will be of use to both.

Of course 'Isolation produces segregation of type,' is only a short-hand expression, meaning—indiscriminate variation being supposed—isolation supplies a necessary condition to segregation of type by upsetting the previous stability that was due to free inter-crossing.

I quite agree that Darwin very greatly over-estimated the benefit of inter-crossing, as I am showing in my forthcoming book on 'Physiological Selection.' But this is quite a different thing from his having made too much of inter-crossing as a condition to stability of type; I do not think that this can be made too much of. Indeed, how is it conceivable that there ever can be divergence of type without isolation of some kind having first occurred at the origin, and throughout the growth of every branch? Moreover, I agree with you about self-fertilisation, but see in it a form of physiological selection; it is one kind of sexual isolation, or prevention of inter-crossing with neighbouring individuals. So that the more perfectly it obtains in any given type, the better chance there is for that type to become a new species by independent variability—and this whether or not the independent variability is likewise indiscriminate (or in your terminology 'indefinite').

In my last letter I referred to the works of Jordan and Nägeli for any number of 'facts in Nature of varieties arising among the type forms.' I will show you the passages when we meet. But even in cases of 'local varieties,' where a variety has a habitat of its own surrounded by the type-form, I should expect experiment would often (though by no means always) show some degree of cross-infertility between the two, pointing to pre-potency (i.e. early stages of physiological selection) being the origin of the divergence.

Before we meet I wish you would try to think of any plants which can be propagated by cuttings (or otherwise asexually) which are known to be modifiable by changed conditions of life in the first generation. I understand you that in some cases the seed of such a plant will not revert—when sown in its natural environment, though, of course, the rule is that it does. Well, in either case, I should much like to try whether a cutting &c. from the transplanted (and therefore modified) tubers &c. would revert to its ancestral character. When retransplanted to its natural environment, much would follow from result of such an experiment as regards Weismannism.

Yours very and always truly,

G. J. Romanes.

P.S.—Of course in saying 'on common areas, sexual differentiation is the only means of securing the isolation,' I did not include self-fertilising plants—any more, e.g. than insect fertilising where changes in the instincts of insects may cause sexual isolation.

I leave for Oxford to-morrow.

These months were made very happy to him by the fact that three friends, Mrs. and Miss Church and the Rev. R. C. Moberly,[122] were staying in the same hotel. He often alludes in his letters to the intense pleasure these friends gave him, and speaks of how much he owed to their tenderness and sympathy, and to their perception when to come and when to stay away.

Many books were heard and read by him. Mr. Gore's Bampton Lectures were read aloud to him, and he liked them even better than when he heard them preached. Several other theological books were read, and of all these the one which bears marks of most careful study is Pascal's 'Pensées.' He used Mr. C. Kegan Paul's translation. The copy he had at Costebelle, which used to lie by his bedside, is marked and annotated. It is the last book he read to himself in his own careful and student-like fashion. He also wrote some notes of advice to his boys.

At this time he began to make notes for a work which he intended to be a supplement or an answer to the 'Candid Examination of Theism.' As he went on, his notes grew—so it seemed to one who read them—increasingly nearer Faith, but of them the world can now judge.

He said one day, while scribbling down notes, 'If anything happens to me before I can work them up into a book, give them to Gore. He will understand.'

Nothing can be more erroneous than to suppose that the change in point of view was sudden, or due to any fear of death, or that it caused mental suffering to the author of 'Thoughts on Religion,' or that he was influenced by anyone, priest or layman.

There will always be unconscious influence, and it probably was not altogether in vain that two or three of Mr. Romanes' greatest and most intimate friends were Christian as well as intellectual men. But of influence and argument and persuasion, as most people imagine them, there was nothing. Discussions many, during the past years, but to these he owed little.

It is written, that those who seek find, and to no one do these words more fitly apply.

During these months Mr. Romanes read many books of a religious nature; particularly and pre-eminently he liked to have Dean Church read aloud, and he also liked Mr. Holland's 'City of God' and Mr. Illingworth's sermons, particularly one on 'Innocence,' which he asked for more than once. He also read much poetry, Miss Rossetti and Archbishop Trench being especial favourites at this time.

To himself he read or had read to him the Bible and Thomas à Kempis, and he liked Dr. Bright's Ancient Collects, and in part Bishop Andrewes' Devotions. He never would read or have anything read to him which did not ring true to him and which he could not appreciate; for instance, the Pleadings of Our Lord's Physical Sufferings in Andrewes' Devotions for Friday were very distasteful to him.

He often went to the English Church for short services, and on Easter Monday Dr. Moberly gave him Holy Communion, for which he had asked and for which he wished.

In the week before Easter he felt very ill, and said, 'I wish Moberly (who had gone away for a few days) were here, and we could have that Celebration; I don't think I shall live till Easter.' But this passed away, and on Easter Day he was peculiarly bright, and in the evening said, 'I have written this poem to-day.'

From the manuscript it is difficult to determine what was the motto of the poem, Hebrews xi. or Hebrews ii.; the latter is more probable, at least so it seems to the present writer.

On the 28th Mr. Romanes wrote a letter to the Dean of Christ Church, which, besides some items of personal interest, and of expressions of affection too intimate to be given, contains the following:

He had all his old interest in psychical research, and a friend, Mrs. Crawfurd, of Auchinames, who shared this interest, used to beguile many weary hours with ghost stories, and he and she used to 'cap' each other's narratives.

There were pleasant people in the hotels around, and the bright sunshine and balmy air were great sources of enjoyment to him. Dr. Bidon, of Hyères, was unfailing in constant kindness, and it would be ungrateful not to say how much was owed to the kind landlord, M. Peyron, and to Madame Peyron.

The journey to England was apparently borne without undue fatigue, and the home coming was very bright, with joyous meeting with his children and with various friends. The only difficulty was to keep him quiet enough. It was said one day, 'When you go home you must not see too many people.' 'Oh, no,' he replied, 'I only want to see Paget, and Dr. Sanderson, and Gore, and Philip (Waggett), and Mrs. Woods, and Ray Lankester, and ——' but he stopped, laughing, the list was already so long and would soon have been doubled. For a few days his wife was away, and during this brief absence a very dear friend, Miss Rose Price, the daughter of the Master of Pembroke, died.

Four weeks more, and the writer of this letter was also borne through Christ Church Meadow, and laid to rest near the young girl whom he had made his friend, and whose death he deeply mourned.

It was thought at this time that a country home would be possibly better for him. Many drives were taken in search of houses or of possible sites for building, and he was often positively boyish and merry during these expeditions.

He began to devise experiments again, and also set to work to arrange his papers and manuscripts in the most methodical way. As has been said he had already arranged that if he died before completing 'Darwin, and after Darwin,' Professor Lloyd Morgan should finish it and publish it, and any other scientific papers, an arrangement to which Mr. Lloyd Morgan most kindly consented. To Mr. Gore were bequeathed the fragmentary notes now published under the title 'Thoughts on Religion.'

On May 3 came the third Romanes Lecture. It was given by Professor Weismann, and was a worthy successor to the two which had preceded it.

Mr. Romanes was glad to meet Professor Weismann, and enjoyed the pleasant talk he and his distinguished opponent had in his house after the lecture.

On the seventh of May he went to London to consult doctors, and for the last time he stayed with his two dear friends, Sir James and Lady Paget.

He saw one or two people and was, as one friend said, 'just his dear merry old self, chaffing and being chaffed.'

He enjoyed music as much as ever, and on the nineteenth of May he went to a concert given by the Ladies' Orchestral Society.

He was often at the Museum, and he wrote frequently of the experiments he was devising, all bearing on Professor Weismann's theory; in these he was assisted by Dr. Leonard Hill.

He wrote several times to Professor Schäfer, and on May 19, four days before his death, in the midst of a long letter too technical to be given, he says, 'All I can do now for science is to pay.'

He still took much interest in Oxford life, and one of the last things he did was to vote against the introduction of the English Language and Literature School.

Cathedral was more than ever a pleasure to him, and he used often to slip in for bits of the service, particularly if some particular service or anthem was going to be given. Especially he loved a few special anthems; Brahms' 'How lovely are Thy dwellings fair' being a great favourite.

He used to go down to the 'Eights' when they began, and on almost the very last day of his life he was with difficulty dissuaded from writing a letter to the 'Times,' strongly supporting the Christ Church authorities whose proceedings in some disturbances in the College had been criticised. On Whit Sunday, for the last time, he went to the University Sermon, which happened to be preached by the Bishop of Lincoln, and which greatly impressed Mr. Romanes, brought as he was for the first time under the spell of one who has influenced more than one generation of Oxford men.

And as the days went on, there was a curious feeling of preparation for some change. He made all his arrangements and was quite calm, quite gentle, even merry at times; now and then the weary fits of physical lassitude or of headache would prostrate him, but when these were past he would placidly begin some bit of work.

On Thursday in Whit week he went to the eight o'clock Celebration of Holy Communion in the Latin Chapel of Christ Church, and in the course of that day he said, 'I have now come to see that faith is intellectually justifiable.' By-and-by he added, 'It is Christianity or nothing.'

Presently he added, 'I as yet have not that real inward assurance; it is with me as that text says, "I am not able to look up," but I feel the service of this morning is a means of grace.'

With Mr. Philip Waggett there had been in these last days some talks, and the two friends, united as they had been in earlier years by their common interest in science, and in those problems which all who think at all must sooner or later face, now found themselves in closer and fuller agreement than either could at one time have believed possible.

Sunday, the twentieth of May, was his birthday and that of his eldest son, and had always been a family festa. He was bright and merry, went to Magdalen to see Mrs. Warren, saw for the last time Dr. Paget, and had a little talk about his 'Thoughts on Religion' with Mr. Gore, whom he went to hear preach in one of the Oxford churches. And on Monday he keenly enjoyed a small luncheon party, consisting of the Master of Balliol, Mr. Gore, and Miss Wordsworth, saying that Poetry, Science, Theology, Philosophy were all represented, and that he would have such-like little parties every now and then, they were so refreshing and did not tire him.

One or two special friends came in to see him on these last days, and he had planned to go and stay at a country house belonging to the President of Trinity, which had been with characteristic kindness put at his disposal.

On Wednesday, May 23, he seemed particularly well; he wrote a letter to the Editor of the 'Contemporary Review' and did some bits of work. It was Sir James and Lady Paget's Golden Wedding day, and he despatched a telegram of congratulation to them. (The very last bit of shopping he ever did was to buy a present for that Golden Wedding, which reached those for whom it was intended after he was dead.)

He came into his study about twelve, and asked that the book in which he was then interested, 'Some Aspects of Theism,'[125] might be read aloud; but before the reading began he changed his mind, and said he would lie down in his bedroom and be read to there. On lying down he complained of feeling very ill, said a few loving words to one who was with him, and became unconscious. His children and the Dean came to him, but he did not recover enough to know them, and passed away in less than an hour: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.

Five days later he was laid to rest in Holywell Cemetery, after an early Celebration in Christ Church, the first part of the service being said in the cathedral which he had loved so much, and which had brought him so much comfort in the last weeks of life.

His favourite hymn, 'Lead, kindly Light,' was sung, and the service was said in part by the friend who had been with him on his wedding-day, given him his first Communion after the illness began, and who had been bound up with many joys and sorrows;[126] and in part by Mr. Philip Waggett, who had been to him as a young brother, more and more loved, during the seven years in which they had walked and talked as friends, the friend known as 'Carissime.' (One other special friend, Mr. Gore, was prevented by illness from coming.)

Looking back over these two years of illness, it is impossible not to be struck by the calmness and fortitude with which that illness was met. There were, as has been said, moments of terrible depression and of disappointment and of grief. It was not easy for him to give up ambition, to leave so many projects unfulfilled, so much work undone.

More and more there grew on him a deepening sense of the goodness of God. No one had ever suffered more from the Eclipse of Faith, no one had ever been more honest in dealing with himself and with his difficulties.

The change that came over his mental attitude may seem almost incredible to those who knew him only as a scientific man; it does not seem so to the few who knew anything of his inner life. To them the impression given is, not of an enemy changed into a friend, antagonism altered into submission; rather is it of one who for long has been bearing a heavy burden on his shoulders bravely and patiently, and who at last has had it lifted from him, and lifted so gradually that he could not tell the exact moment when he found it gone, and himself standing, like the Pilgrim of never to be forgotten story, at the foot of the Cross, and Three Shining Ones coming to greet him.

It was recovery, to some extent discovery, which befell him, but there was no change of purpose, no sudden intellectual or moral conversion.

He had always cared more for Truth, for the knowledge of God, than for anything else in the world. In the years most outwardly happy he was crying out in the darkness for light, with a soul athirst for God, and, as was said before, he did most truly re-echo St. Augustine's words, 'Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in Te.'

It is difficult for anyone who has lived in closest intimacy with him to speak of him in words which will not to those who did not know him seem exaggerated, nay, extravagant; to those who knew and loved him, cold, inadequate, lifeless; for he bore 'the white flower of a blameless life' from boyhood onwards, and in heart and life he was unstained, pure, unselfish, unworldly in the truest sense.

When the Shadow of Death lay on him, and the dread messenger was drawing near, and he looked back on his short life, he could reproach himself only for what he called sins of the intellect, mental arrogance, undue regard for intellectual supremacy.

When a man has lived with broad and strong interest in life, neither discarding nor slighting any true part of it in home, or society, or work, the various aspects of his character and career are likely to be many and suggestive. And so there may be some warrant for an attempt to disengage one line of advance in the life, one trait in the example, and to concentrate attention upon that, while the other and perhaps more widely recognised elements are for the moment left unnoticed. There was one such line of advance in the life of George Romanes, of which it may be hard to speak, but wrong, perhaps, to be wholly silent. Few men have shown more finely the simplicity and patience in sustained endeavour which are the conditions of attainment in the quest of truth. It is easy to see how the training and habits of a mind devoted to natural science may render faith more difficult, and cross or check the venture of the soul towards the things eternal and unseen. But there is one quality proper to such a mind which should have a different effect, and act as a safeguard against a fault that often checks or mars the growth of faith. That quality is tenacity of uncorrelated fragments; the endurance of incompleteness; the patient refusal to attenuate or discard a fact because it will not fit into a system; the determined hope that whatsoever things are true have further truth to teach, if only they are held fast and fairly dealt with. The sincerely scientific mind shows such tenacity as that under every trial of its faith and patience, howsoever long and unpromising and unrelieved; for it knows itself responsible not for attainment, but for perseverance; not for conquest, but for loyalty. It resists even the temptation to dislike the untidy scraps of observation or experience which will match nothing and go nowhere; for it suspects and reveres in all the possibility of new light.

And surely there is a like excellence of thought, rare, and high, and exemplary, in regard to the things unseen, the things that are spiritually discerned. Scattered up and down the world, coming one way or another within the ken of all men, there are facts of plain experience which will not really fit, unmutilated, undisfigured, into any scheme or view of life that leaves God out of sight. They are facts, it may be, of which a full account can hardly, if at all, be given. They are fragmentary, isolated, imponderable; clearer at one time than at another; largely dependent, for anything like due recognition, upon the individual mind, and heart, and will. Yet there they are, flashing out at times with an intensity which makes all else seem pale and cold; disclosing, or ready to disclose, to any quietness of thought, great hints of worlds unrealised and possibilities of overwhelming glory.

And it is on loyalty, on justice to such fragments of truth, unaccounted for and unarranged, that for many men the trial of faith may turn. All is not lost, and everything is possible, so long as the mind refuses to doubt the reality of the light that has come, perhaps, as yet only in broken rays. Of such justice and loyalty George Romanes set a very high example. The strength and simplicity and patience of his character appeared in nothing else more remarkably, more happily, than in his undiscouraged grasp of those unseen realities which invade this world in the name and power of the world to come. The love of precision and completeness never dulled his care for the things that he could neither define, nor label, nor arrange; in their fragmentariness he treasured them, in their reserve he trusted them, waiting faithfully to see what they might have to show him. And they did not fail him. This is not the place in which to try to speak of the graces and the gladness which from such loyal sincerity passed into his life, nor of the clearer light that grew and spread before his wistful, hopeful gaze. But it hardly can be wrong to have said thus much of so noble and so timely a pattern of allegiance to all truth discerned; and of this great lesson in a life which seemed even here to have the earnest of that promise—'He that seeketh, findeth'—a life which seemed to be moving steadily towards the blessing of the pure in heart, the vision of Almighty God.[129]

F. P.

A letter from Mr. Gladstone cannot be omitted, and seems to come in fittingly at this place:

Not much remains to be said. The life here described would seem to have been cut short, but, as was said by a friend, 'in a short time he fulfilled a long time,'[130] and few have won for themselves more love in the home and beyond it. He left no enemy, and those who loved him and to whom his loss has left a blank and desolation of which it is not well to speak, can only be thankful for what he was and for what he is. Not indeed that one would forget those words of Dean Church quoted in the beautiful preface to his Life:[131]

'I often have a kind of waking dream: up one road, the image of a man decked and adorned as if for a triumph, carried up by rejoicing and exulting friends, who praise his goodness and achievements; and, on the other road, turned back to back to it, there is the very man himself, in sordid and squalid apparel, surrounded not by friends but by ministers of justice, and going on, while his friends are exulting, to his certain and perhaps awful judgment. That vision rises when I hear, not just and conscientious endeavours to make out a man's character, but when I hear the loose things that are said—often in kindness and love—of those beyond the grave.'

But there have been men and women who have lifted the minds and the hearts of those who knew and loved them to increasing love for goodness, to increasing loftiness of ideal, and for these, whom now no praise can hurt, no blame can wound, one can but lift one's heart in ever growing thankfulness for the gifts and graces which made them what they were, and which will grow and increase in them until the Perfect Day.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] Mr. Romanes had belonged for many years to the Aristotelian Society, and had contributed papers to the Journal of the Society. He also once belonged to the Psychological Club, which used to meet at Professor Croom Robertson's house. The other members of the club were Mr. Francis Galton, Mr. Sully, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, Professor Edgeworth, Professor Dunstan, Mr. Edmund Gurney, Mrs. Bryant, and one or two others.

[69] See Thoughts on Religion, p. 92.

[70] The beautiful cemetery adjoining Holywell Church, Oxford.

[71] Dr. Liddon died in September 1890.

[72] The house which Mr. Romanes had taken was originally an almshouse.

[73] The Physiological Society has a yearly meeting at Oxford.

[74] Professor Victor Horsley, F.R.S., Univ. Coll. London.

[75] Professor of Physiology at Oxford.

[76] Professor W. Dunstan, F.R.S.

[77] 'Lights of the Church and of Science.'

[78] Professor Kitchen Parker, F.R.S.

[79] Mr. R. Scott, F.R.S.

[80] The Colours of Animals, by E. B. Poulton, M.A., F.R.S., International Scientific Series, vol. lxviii.

[81] A beautiful terrier.

[82] Two more dogs.

[83] This was the last summer at Geanies.

[84] Mr. E. B. Turner, F.R.C.S.

[85] Psalm xxvii.

[86] A pet name for his daughter.

[87] He had slipped on the rocks and hurt his arm.

[88] His third son.

[89] On 'Physiological Selection.' See Nature, vol. xlii. pp. 5, 7, and vol. xliii. pp. 79 and 127.

[90] The late Professor Sellar.

[91] The Oxford Natural History Society.

[92] The Astronomer Royal at the Cape and his wife.

[93] The Rev. Bartholomew Price, D.D., F.R.S.

[94] Mr. Gladstone had declined at first, but yielded to a second urgent request from the founder.

[95] The home of Sir William and the Hon. Lady Welby-Gregory.

[96] On the work alluded to in a letter to Professor Schäfer.

[97] The Rev. Philip Napier Waggett, now of Cowley St. John, who was one of Mr. Romanes' most intimate friends, Mr. Waggett's scientific attainments made him a valuable as well as a much loved friend.

[98] The Rev. E. Moore, D.D.

[99] Since this letter has been in type the world has had to lament Mr. Huxley's death.

[100] Privy Councillor.

[101] The proprietor of an hotel in Madeira.

[102] Miss Pollock's marriage to Mr. Vernon Boys, F.R.S., is here referred to.

[103] A pet name for his sister.

[104] A window to his memory is to be placed in Caius College Chapel.

[105] A favourite cousin, who died a few mouths after Mr. Romanes.

[106] See p. 289, above.

[107] His wedding-day.

[108] Dr. Paget had been very ill.

[109] Mr. Waggett.

[110] It was 'book-plate.'

[111] Contemporary, April 1892.

[112] His butler, an old and valued servant.

[113] F. J. Moulton, Esq., M.P., F.R.S.

[114] Professor W. Crookes, F.R.S.

[115] Mr. Herbert Spencer on 'Natural Selection,' Contemporary Review, April 1893.

[116] Now Bishop of Rochester.

[117] About eighteen months before, when a very temporary attack of aphasia had come on.

[118] His brother was making additions to the house at Dunskaith.

[119] He did see one more.

[120] See Life and Letters of C. Darwin, vol. iii. p. 358.

[121] Mr. G. R. Turner, F.R.C.S., one of Mr. Romanes's dearest friends; as was also his brother, Mr. E. B. Turner, F.R.C.S.

[122] Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology at Oxford.

[123] Of St. Giles's Parish Church.

[124] A pet name for the two babies.

[125] By Professor Knight of St. Andrews.

[126] The Dean of Christ Church.

[127] Dante's Purgatorio, I.

[128] The Dean of Christ Church.

[129] Reprinted from the Guardian of June 6.

[130] Wisdom, iv. 13.

[131] Preface to Life and Letters of Dean Church, p. xxiv.