This trenchant essay contains fifty-seven pages, of which reasoning forms the greater part. As to the facts it might well pass for an essay from Professor Poulton’s pen, for Weismann’s special province of insects occupies nearly all the evidence from facts. Outside this highly specialised group there are exactly fifty-three lines, or one and a half pages, which deal with other animal groups, and there are four casual allusions to plants occupying twelve lines in all! In the essay of 1909 on the Selection Theory this treatment of animated life in the world is improved upon and thirteen out of its forty-seven pages refer to animals outside his favourite group of insects. Such exclusive dealing with these little things does not commend the reasoning, at any rate to a neo-Lamarckian; such a circle is too select for him. Weismann’s Twelve Points. The most striking remarks from the 1895 essay on germinal selection are:-- 1. “The real aim of the present essay is to rehabilitate the principle of selection. If I should succeed in reinstating this principle in its imperilled rights, it would be a source of extreme satisfaction to me.”[14] [14] Preface to _Germinal Selection_, 1895, p. xii. 2. Speaking of the whole theory of selection he claimed to have found a position “which is necessary to protect it against the many doubts which gathered around it on all sides like so many lowering thunder-clouds.”[15] And he speaks on page 26 of “the flood of objections against the theory of selection touching its inability to modify many parts at once.” [15] p. 38. Thus Weismann stood forth to defend the crumbling edifice of Darwinism and threw his shining sword into the scales, a scientific Athanasius “contending for our all.” Again is seen a friend of Darwin from another camp than that of Mendel, whose support needs to be received with some caution. _Toujours en vedette_ is a useful rule. 3. Speaking of adaptedness in animated nature he says, “We know of only one natural principle of explanation for this fact--that of selection.”[16] [16] p. 43. 4. “Germinal selection is the last consequence of the application of the principle of Malthus to living nature.”[17] [17] p. 43. 5. “Without doubt the theory (Germinal Selection) requires that the initial steps of a variation should also have selective value.”[18] [18] p. 38. 6. “Something is still wanting in the theory of Darwin and Wallace which it is obligatory on us to discover if we possibly can. We must seek to discover why it happens that useful variations are always present.”[19] [19] p. 15. 7. “It is impossible to do without the assumption that the useful variations are always present, or that _they always exist in a sufficiently large number of individuals for the selective process_.”[20] [20] p. 14.