Mr. Romanes proceeds to inform me personally that the reference to "Nature" in his proof "originally indicated another writer who had independently advanced the same theory as that of Canon Kingsley." After this I have a right to ask him to tell me who the writer is, and where I shall find what he said. I ask this, and at my earliest opportunity will do my best to give this writer, too, the credit he doubtless deserves. I have never professed to be the originator of the theory connecting heredity with memory. I knew I knew so little that I was in great trepidation when I wrote all the earlier chapters of "Life and Habit." I put them paradoxically, because I did not dare to put them otherwise. As the book went on, I saw I was on firm ground, and the paradox was dropped. When I found what Professor Hering had done, I put him forward as best I could at once. I then learned German, and translated him, giving his words in full in "Unconscious Memory;" since then I have always spoken of the theory as Professor Hering's. Mr. Romanes says that "the theory in question forms the backbone of all the previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers (not to mention their numerous followers) and is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any theory can be stated in words." Few except Mr. Romanes will say this. I grant it ought to have formed the backbone "of all previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers," but when I wrote "Life and Habit" it was not understood to form it. If it had been, I should not have found it necessary to come before the public this fourth time during the last seven years to insist upon it. Of course the theory is not new--it was in the air and bound to come; but when it came, it came through Professor Hering of Prague, and not through those who, great as are the services they have rendered, still did not render this particular one of making memory the keystone of their system. Mr. Romanes now says: "Why, of course, that's what they were meaning all the time." Perhaps they were, but they did not say so, and others--conspicuously Mr. Romanes himself--did not understand them to be meaning what he now discovers that they meant. When Mr. Romanes attacked me in _Nature_, January 27, 1881, he said I had "been anticipated by Professor Hering," but he evidently did not understand that any one else had anticipated me; and far from holding, as he now does, that "the theory in question forms the backbone of all the previous" writers on instinct, and "is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any theory can be stated in words," he said (in a passage already quoted) that it was "interesting, if advanced merely as an illustration, but to imagine that it maintains any truth of profound significance, or that it can possibly be fraught with any benefit to science, is absurd." Considering how recently Mr. Romanes wrote the words just quoted, he has soon forgotten them.