These three are the only errors of any importance that I acknowledge at once. A certain number of minor points are questioned in the Review, and the theoretical portion is strongly criticised. It would be irrelevant to the main purpose of a book which is limited to the subject of Habit and Hair Direction in Animals to introduce some of the more debateable branches of the subject of the former book, such as tufts, the direction of the hair on the mole, the classifica­tion of the hair-streams of the mammalian body into primitive, those modified by morphological change, and those due to use and habit. This last is a very wide subject and is far beyond the present limits.

I freely make another acknowledgment. The whole of the subject of the Direction of Hair in Animals and Man was taken up ad hoc, that is to say, for the purpose of testing the unpopular doctrine of Lamarckism. If this be an offence against the highest spirit of science, I can but accept the charge with a sigh, and go on, “faint yet pursuing.” There is consola­tion in finding that increased study of a subject is bringing order out of chaos, even if the field be small and the immediate crop poor.

The following are some of the objections raised to the theoretical part of the book:—

The most serious charge against my interpreta­tion of the mode of formation of patterns (whorls and tufts) is that there is a lack of harmony between my preliminary statement that whorls are due to motor or muscular causes and a subsequent explana­tion of some of them as due to external pressure. I did not state then as clearly as I do now in many passages in the present chapters that for pattern produc­tion there may be at least four causes: friction, pressure, gravity, underlying muscular traction, and that whorls and featherings may, of course, arise from some other external force acting on the hair at the decisive point of struggle, just as well as from the more common cause—muscular traction on the skin. I think in this region of the Review and where she deals with Selection, she shows signs of that scientific monism which is still affecting many of our great biologists, that is to say, they desire a world-empire in evolution for the great factor of Selection, and will stretch their arguments considerably to save its face. This is shown in the Review on page 406 where a very thin plea is put in on behalf of adapta­tion and Selection in regard to hair-directions, as in man’s minute hairs, which cannot be seriously maintained. That earth is stopped!

Darwin’s open-minded dualism in this matter of the factors of evolution appeals to me at any rate more than the jealous attitude of Weismann and his eminent adherents.

Miss Whipple is less determined than I am in claiming for Selection the cause of the primitive slope of hair in mammals. It is the only conceivable arrangement that could exist for the advantage of the primitive forms in their simple life, and is, I submit, as much a matter of adapta­tion to needs governed by Selection as the possession of a dermal covering itself.

One more point, which, I think, is a small one and a fair one to raise, is worthy of a few remarks. Miss Whipple states that before variations in hair-direction can be logically attributed to external forces (giving the instance of the human scalp) “it should be shown that a change in the direction of the external, more or less wiry portion of the hair produces a change in the direction of the follicle.” As it happens, this change is easily seen in the case of the reversed hairs of the human forearm, if the hair be dark and the skin thin. The essence of the theory that dragging on the skin by muscular traction causes the hair to change its direction is that the relatively important portion within the hair-pit is pulled here or there according to the incidence of the prevailing force. But it is, to my mind, very clear that much repeated friction or pressure or gravity acting on the external and longer portion of the hair must, in course of time, drag the portion buried in the skin with it and so change its direction. These two portions of a hair cannot be arbitrarily separated. Shortly, one may say that the push of a force is as evident as the pull. A similar change in the direction of the buried part of a tree-trunk from a prevailing wind can be traced.

The last point is that I “omit to explain the mechanical process by which divergent muscular action could affect hair-direction.” This is well answered in the chapter on “Can muscular action in the individual change the direction of the hair?” for there it is shown by numerous examples in the human eyebrow that the muscles underneath the hairs which are embedded in the true skin for a tangible depth, do play havoc with the normal arrangement of hair, as the conflict proceeds, the resultant “pull” being actually engraved, signed and sealed by physiological wrinkles of the forehead and face.