which render him difficult to perceive as he creeps upon his prey among the up-and-down lights and shadows of the pale straw-coloured dead grasses in his favourite ravines; while the tree-cats, such as jaguars, ocelots, and so forth, are spotted or dappled, because the spots make them more difficult to recognise among the round lights and shadows in their native forests. Spotted deer and antelopes also belong to forest regions; while almost all of those with vertical stripes are constant frequenters of deep grasslands." Many more cases might be quoted of mimesis in its various forms, conscious, sub-conscious, and almost if not entirely unconscious, but those already given are sufficient for my purpose. And before proceeding further let me say that I am well aware that many naturalists adopt the view that some of these apparent results of mimicry, or mimesis, are really accounted for solely by natural selection; that is to say, that being protective and advantageous modifications, the creatures which have by chance become the subjects of these modifications have survived, whilst those not so protected have died out. But this is a most difficult conception as accounting for the whole of the facts. By this theory, variation has taken place in countless directions of colour and form; and only those varieties have been preserved which are protective in the most superlative degree. But if this process of variation has taken place in countless directions at some time in the past, it must also be taking place now in some noticeable degree at every fresh generation of life. We do not find, however, that this is so to anything like the extent which a persistent tendency to variation in all directions would postulate. On the contrary, the predominating tendency appears to be very strongly conservative, and to follow mainly the parental form and colour. But just as here The dity follows in the main directly mimetic lines, so also does it appear that the deviations (i.e., variations) which accrue and modify the results of hereditary succession are largely due to a collateral mimesis. The only modifications which we ourselves can actually witness, as in process, are modifications due to environment in the broadest sense of that term; we find these taking place with remarkable rapidity, and often possessing a distinctly mimetic aspect. That we witness modifications due to environment in man and domestic animals goes without saying. But the same is also true of some of our more distant biological relations, and in some such cases we have the most distinct evidence of a mimetic factor. flounder transferred to the stony bed puts on spots which render it less visible; the ptarmigan, and other creatures found in snowy regions, put on a white coat to match their surroundings; the chameleon and some marine creatures change their appearance during the currency of a single day in such a way as to resemble their surroundings more closely; and thus it may safely be said that there are variations, though only temporary in some cases, of which we have clear and positive evidence that they are mimetic. With such an agency at work we do not need to postulate myriads of ages of natural selection as the sole influence in variation, involving, as such a supposition does, the survival of only a minute fraction of myriads of forms of life which have in the main passed away and left no descendants, in order to explain phenomena of which we can, during very short periods of time, witness some counterpart ourselves. It must not be supposed that in these observations there is any attempt to traverse the current theory of evolution in one of its most important details. The survival of the fittest represents nature's pruning-hook. But we must not confuse this " pruning-hook" with the luxuriant growth which it restricts. Variation is the efficient force; natural selection is the restraining and restrictive check. And in the mimetic function we find one of the factors, perhaps the most important factor, in that agency of variation which to all appearance takes effect upon definite and restricted lines, rather than in the sporadic fashion which anything analogous to pure chance would necessarily bring about. To return, then, to our main line of argument. I contend, having regard to the facts adduced, that there is exactly the same evidence of mimesis being a function of all living matter as there is that a similar proposition is true of consciousness. In various ways it exhibits itself in divergent lines of those chains of life which, by the theory of Evolution, are connected by primordial forms; and, therefore, using the same method of reasoning which we used before in regard to consciousness, it follows that the mimetic function must have pre-existed, either simply as such, or in component, but at some time separate elements, throughout the whole biological chain. But from its nature we have no reason whatever to believe mimesis to be a compound any more than we have reason to believe consciousness to be compounded of psychic elements more rudimentary than itself; and we are thus bound upon all probable reasoning to take it to be a function of all living matter in our world. But how, I may be asked, does this affect the theory which was stated last year in this room, that there is an ethereal substance in man's being in which his identity is bound up, and which, together with the grosser constituents of his frame, forms part of the human integral E as we know it? Is not our present theorem incompatible with this previous one? I reply in the negative. For just as we are bound by physical considerations to recognise that there is an interaction within man of the grosser forms of matter with an active increment of the ether, so also is the same proposition true of every other creature that lives. In its substance the ether is a constant and necessary ingredient of all living bodies. In its volume and in its specialized activities it probably varies in each of them. But as an ingredient, present always in every living form, it no more affects my present argument than does the simultaneous constant presence of any of the other invariable constituents of living protoplasm. The argument holds good, therefore, of the whole chain of life, whatever the constant ingredients of each link of the chain may be; and we come, therefore, to the conclusion that, as necessary corollaries of biological evolution, we must assume the presence in each unit of self-consciousness, and also of the mimetic function to which we have referred. 51 THE WASHINGTON FAMILY,* ASHINGTON IRVING'S Waters, M.A., whose pamphlet was not published until 1889. The New England Historical and Genealogical Society was responsible for the issue of this pamphlet, and thus was the means of announcing the filling up of a hiatus in the pedigree of the great family under consideration. For a long time it has been a matter of common knowledge that the ancestors of General Washington dwelt at Sulgrave and Brington, in Northamptonshire, and I shall hereafter briefly refer to the views held with regard to their pedigree prior to the more extended and successful researches of Mr. Watson. One sentence from Irving throws a flood of light on the earliest references to the Washington family. He says: "The princely prelate of Durham had his barons and knights, who held estates of him on feudal tenure, and were bound to serve him in peace and war." Among these knights was William de Hertburn-an |