To Some Critics.

It may save time and trouble if replies are given in anticipa­tion to certain classes of critics. I refer of course to those who are well-informed in their branch of knowledge.

To those of high authority and learning, those who ride on white asses and that sit in judgment, who may seek to throw the case into chancery, saying, “This will never do, it contradicts current biological opinion.” I can only meekly reply that current or orthodox opinion is frequently wrong, or (shall I say) seldom right, and that the history of human thought is strewn with examples which may justify my impertinent reply.

To another who says, “I daresay you are right in your claim, but there are too many metaphors,” I would suggest that, so long as metaphors are not used as arguments, the more metaphors—within limits—the clearer the meaning of the statement.

To him who grudgingly allows, “I think you have proved your case—but what does it prove?” I reply that it proves what it set out to prove, no more and no less, and it is an integral part of proof of a larger claim. And if he further grumble that these matters have no interest for him, one may ask him to live and let live. “What have I now done in comparison of you, is not the gleaning of your grapes of great Ephraim better than the vintage of this little Abiezer?”

To the man who reads the preface and the headings of the chapters, glances at the illustrations, detects one split infinitive, two misspellings and three errors of punctua­tion, goes home to tea and writes his opinion—it may suffice to remind him of “that curious mental state which looks past problems without seeing them.”

I will conclude this section with a parable.

In the year 1788 Arthur Young in his travels through France visited the desolate region of the Landes. “Wastes, wastes, wastes!” was his lament over neglected Brittany, and no less could he say of the Landes, at that time a miserable tract of low ground, bordering the Bay of Biscay. Plantations, the sinking of wells, drainage and irriga­tion began to fix the unstable sands, making fruitful the marsh, creating a healthful climate and a fertile soil. Early in the 19th century the land here was sold au son de la voix, that is to say, the accepted standard of measurement was the compass of the human lungs. The stretch of ground reached by a man’s voice sold for a few francs. Crops replaced the scanty herbage of the salt marsh, and a familiar characteristic of the landscape, the shepherd on stilts, was seen no more. Six hundred thousand hectares of Landes planted with sea pines produced resin to the annual value of fifteen million francs, and through these trees also was achieved a climatic revolu­tion, and it is this district which is now a department of a great and well-ordered State.[62]

CHAPTER XVII.
VARIETIES OF EPIDERMIS.

Passing now to the smaller trenches of the front line I have chosen as the first of them a small study of the varieties of epidermis found in mammals. With the exception of aquatic mammals so few of this, the greatest vertebrate class, are not clothed with hair that it is only on the comparatively hairless body of man, with its third of a million fine hairs, that the varieties of epidermis can be broadly studied. Much of this chapter will resolve itself into a considera­tion of the palmar and plantar surfaces of certain mammals, where no hairy covering obscures the operation of stimulus and response.

I assume that the foregoing phenomena of hair-direction have chosen and raised on his shield their own king. But here I must ask of the succeeding groups when they say, “I am, Sir, under the King, in some authority,” the question, “Under which King, Bezonian, speak or die”—

Shall it be Darwin’s Personal Selection?
Roux’s Cellular or Histonal Selection?
Wallace’s and Romanes’ Sexual Selection?
Weismann’s Germinal Selection?
The rule of Mendel?
Selection of mutations according to de Vries?
Or shall it be the barbarian king Plasto-diēthēsis?

Which indeed of the seven kings will they choose, if I may thus personify them? I may, perhaps, urge on them the mild and tolerant rule of Lamarck and Darwin rather than that of the other anointed sovereigns, hoping this cannot be taken as an attempt to influence the jury through the Press in a case which is still sub judice.