St. George Mivart and the Duke of Argyll, have withheld their
adhesion. Since his death, moreover, his disciples have tended to split
into two schools. On the one hand, Weismann has rejected the Lamarckian
factors,--the effect of use and disuse upon organs, and the
transmissibility of acquired characters. The importance of these factors
has been emphatically re-asserted, on the other hand, by Lankester and
others. Whether biologists, however, range themselves in the
Neo-Darwinian or in the Neo-Lamarckian camp, the value of the principle
of natural selection is acknowledged by all, and nobody now asserts the
independent creation and permanence of species.

AUTHORITIES.

The Complete Works of Darwin, published by D. Appleton and Company.

The Works of Alfred Russel Wallace.

Francis Darwin's "Life of Charles Darwin."

Huxley's Writings, _passim_.

Haeckel's "Natural History of Creation."

Weismann's "Studies in the Theory of Descent" and subsequent papers.

Romanes's "Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution."

Lankester's "Degeneration."

Fiske's "Darwinism and Other Essays."

For adverse criticism of Darwin, read Mivart's "Genesis of Species," and
the Duke of Argyll's "Unity of Nature."

JOHN ERICSSON.

1803-1889.

NAVIES OF WAR AND COMMERCE.

BY W.F. DURAND, PH.D.

The exact combination of inspiration, heredity, and environment which
serves to produce genius will perhaps ever be a problem beyond the skill
of human intelligence. When the rare elements do combine, however, the
result is always worthy of most careful study, both because great
achievements furnish a healthy stimulus to emulation, and because some
glimpse may be gained of Nature's working in the formation of her
rarest products.

Few lives better illustrate these remarks than that of John Ericsson.
Born of middle-class parentage and with no apparent source of heredity
from which to draw the stores of genius which he displayed throughout
his life, and with surroundings in boyhood but little calculated to
awaken and inspire the life-work which later made him famous, from this
beginning and with these early surroundings John Ericsson became
unquestionably the greatest of the engineers of the age in which he
lived and of the century which witnessed such mighty advances along all
engineering lines. The imprint left by Ericsson's life on the
engineering practice of his age was deep and lasting, and if one may
dare look into the