My dear Poulton,--I am very sorry that, being already engaged for to-morrow, I cannot attend the meeting. But I should like to join the Society.[91] Only, please, postpone any suggestion about lecturing, as this term I shall be dreadfully busy, between the book and the experiments. H. has certainly been very successful over a very difficult experiment. I tried it in an elaborate way. But I lacked assistance for the mechanical performance, and so intended to do it here this term. Now I am saved the trouble, but have gained experience. This prevents me from regarding H.'s result as final, although, as you say, valuable. My scepticism is founded on a queer freak of heredity, which my own work showed me; but as I think I spoke too much about the experiments I was trying, in future I shall adopt Weismann's method of silence before publication. Yours ever, GEO. J. ROMANES. About this time Mr. Romanes was much interested in a scheme for promoting the establishment of a garden or farm for the purpose of studying questions of hereditary transmission, or heredity. His object was to afford facilities which at present do not exist for observing the modifications produced in animals and plants by subjecting them during long periods and in successive generations to suitable external conditions, and for testing the transmissibility of the modifications so produced. He was anxious that such an Institution should be founded in connection with one of the Universities, and with this view, circulated the following memorandum. 'AN INSTITUT TRANSFORMISTE.' In an English translation of a lecture which was recently delivered by M. Giard, as Professor of Evolutionary Biology in France, there occurs the following passage: 'If evolutionists must content themselves in most cases with experiments carried on in nature, or those of breeders, instead of applying themselves to verifications made with all the rigour of modern scientific precision, is it not because of the deplorable insufficiency of our laboratories? It is astonishing that in no country, not even where science is held in greatest honour, does there yet exist an _Institut transformiste_ devoted to the long and costly experiments now indispensable for the progress of evolutionary biology.'