an expression of my desire to separate what seems to me the grain of good science from the chaff of bad speculation.” It is far otherwise with Weismann’s theory of evolution. Romanes shows that with the removal of its essential postulate the absolute stability of germ-plasm, Weismann’s theory of evolution falls to the ground. He has indeed surrendered much in his later building, his second temple of Solomon, and prominent among these was the claim that the only causes of individual variation and of the origin of species in the uni-cellular organisms are the Lamarckian factors, just as in the multicellular _the only cause of these is natural selection_. Thus we see standing at the critical date, 1892, the first Eddystone lighthouse of Winstanley, a greater and more important structure than the old pharos. Germinal Selection. It can hardly be doubted that one of the “thunderclouds” threatening Darwinism, of which Weismann spoke in 1895, was this examination of Weismannism by Romanes. As the case stood then some fresh strategy was needed if victory for Darwin was to be won, at least so the great leader said. It must be remembered that it was the _personal_ selection of Darwin which was held to be in danger. Accordingly germinal selection was brought forth and remained the basis of Weismann’s later _Evolution Theory_ of 1904 and 1909. Romanes did not live to see or assist in the disproof of this ambitious piece of work so that his “examination” is so far incomplete. The position of germinal selection is defined in Weismann’s statement that “it is the adaptive requirement itself that produces the useful direction of variation by means of selectional processes within the germ.” Here it is in a nutshell. The theory itself is consistent, and clearness has been added to the earlier evolution theory by the claim that a struggle for nutriment occurs within the fertilised ovum between the innumerable determinants of the different parts, so that maintenance or victory over weaker determinants takes place. Thus we have a survival of the fittest _in petto_ in the germ analogous to that of the individual organisms as we see them. There is of course a resemblance here to the cellular or histonal selection of Roux, but his doctrines are not weighted with the intolerable dogma of the non-inheritance of acquired characters. But ultimately this conception of germinal selection has to come down and bow to the tribunal of facts, and the remark of Weismann on Lamarckism which has been already quoted, “It seems to me that an hypothesis of this kind has performed its service and must be discarded the moment it is found to be at hopeless variance with the facts,” confronts the consistent Weismannian. And I venture to say here that germinal selection is represented by the Eddystone lighthouse of 1756–9 erected by Smeaton.