| Henry de Varigny (1855-1934) was a
Member of the Société de Biologie and Demonstrator in the
Institute of Comparative Pathology in the
Paris Museum of Natural History. His biography of
Charles Darwin was published in 1889. The
Preface to his 1892 work Experimental Evolution begins thusly:
"THE following pages contain a record of lectures which I delivered in August, 1891, in Edinburgh,
before the very cultivated and attentive audiences afforded by the Summer School of Art and Science which
Professor Patrick Geddes
is evolving with great expense of energy and devotion to science, aided by some personal friends whose
interest he has well awakened in the organisation and diffusion of knowledge. I wish to be reckoned among these;
and I took part with much pleasure in the proceedings, while on a visit to Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, and London,
where the French Government had commissioned me to investigate the University Extension Movement." In 1896 he submitted
an English translation of his work
Air and Life
to the Smithsonian Institution, and three years later co-wrote Histoire De La Lutte Entre La Science Et La Theologie.
He authored numerous articles. 1 |
| Experimental Evolution (1892):
"...When food is abundant, and easy to get, animals and man are prosperous and
attain large dimensions, while when it is scarce they remain smaller. Japanese horticulturists rely in part on this
influence of the scarcity of food in their process for the dwarfing of plants. Most persons have seen -- or at
least heard of -- these diminutive plants of theirs, mostly conifers, such as Thuja, Juniperus, etc.,
which, while aged 40, 60, 80, 100, or 150 years, are often much less than a yard high, although their relative
proportions are well preserved, so that when you look at them it is exactly as if you were looking at a normal large
tree through the wrong end of a glass. These dwarfs are the result, in part, of mechanical processes which
prevent the spreading of branches, and in part, of a starving process which consists in cutting most roots, and in
keeping the plant in poor soil. Many of these Japanese dwarfs may be seen in Europe, and they well illustrate
the influence of external conditions on growth and dimensions. Numerous instances show that plants or animals
transferred from unfavourable to favourable conditions, or vice versa, acquire larger dimensions, or, on the contrary
[72] become smaller..." 2 |
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1
de Varigny, Henry, D.Sc Experimental Evolution: lectures delivered in the "Summer School
of Art and Science" University Hall, Edinburgh (August, 1891) (London: Macmillan and Company, 1892), pg.
v.
2
de Varigny, pg.
71.
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