one who reads of the immense amount of research and learning that are being carried on by the students of Mendelism and Mutationism can fail to admire them. But, as I have remarked before, these are systems of thought which in the main deal with characters by distribution or “unpacking,” as it is called. Such a process of course leads to new characters by amphimixis, and no one of whom I know denies it. Such work is concerned with fresh views of the origin of species, but with lamentable cowardice, or humility, I leave all that great sphere to those who are incomparably more fit for it, and just seek to mind my own business. In subsequent chapters on modifications and their origin I shall not need to repeat these observations. Some Chosen Examples of Palms and Soles. The facts then of a few selected examples of the palms and soles of mammals are shortly these. A heavy, burrowing animal, the _earth wolf_ of the Cape, has a very smooth, hard epidermis covering its foot-pads and is thus a generalised structure which I have found in no other animal. The common _mole_ which uses its broad strong fore-feet like a pair of spades, and depends chiefly for discrimination of its habitat on the delicate sensory nerve-endings of its snout, has a hard nodular skin which is much less developed on the hind feet than the fore feet, the latter being less active tools. It has no papillary ridges, in accordance with this fact, and is a very efficient miner that never practises ca’ canny, as we know to our cost when we go out in the morning and find great heaps of soft earth thrown up in the line of its advance from its base or fortress. Such a mode of life lends itself remarkably to the kind of skin on its feet, and this is _now_ at any rate adapted _to_ its environment. The _capybara_ is a large, heavily-built rodent, and has rather a smooth epidermis not specially thick, with long and efficient papillæ of the corium shown in microscopical sections. Being largely aquatic in its habitat, and given to frequenting marshy ground and to enjoying as much sleep as it can manage, it depends a good deal for discrimination of objects on its sensitive corium, and its epidermis is not much specialised for, or by friction and pressure in walking. It does not acquire by reason of stimuli and response any unnecessary tools. With this may be classed the _echidna_ or Australian ant-eater which has sparse hairs set on a hard and slightly corrugated epidermis, and, being mainly a nocturnal animal and living a secluded life, it does not walk much or far in its stealthy pursuit of worms and insects, and the stimuli of friction or pressure encountered by it are few. A similar condition is found on the feet of many small carnivores.