thing to suggest the popular conception of the grim and relentless prosecutor, unless, perhaps, it is in the eyes, which are gray and steely. Somewhat slight of build and clean-shaven, the Attorney-General has a voice that is soft and mellow with the tones of the Southland. The tan he wears he got from golf, for this is now one of his favorite means of recreation. He

would prefer, perhaps, to spend his leisure hours with the rod or gun, for he holds an enviable record as a fisherman and crack wing shot; but of late he has had little opportunity to indulge his liking for these sports.

Mr. Gregory was born November 6, 1861, at Crawfordsville, Miss. His father, Dr. Francis Robert Gregory, was a native of famous old Mecklenburg County, Va., but moved to Mississippi. He fell at the battle of Corinth as captain of the thirtyfifth Mississippi. Mr. Gregory grew up as the only child of his widowed mother on the Mississippi plantation of his ma

ternal grandfather, Major Thomas Watt. After his graduation from the University of Virginia in 1884, he moved to Austin, Tex., where, in the fall of 1885, he began the practice of law. Thus it happens that several states claim him as son.

Although not quite 53 years of age, he is the third oldest member in the Cabinet, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Commerce alone outranking him in years. As head of the Department of Justice, Mr. Gregory is in a position of great trust and tremendous power. Under his command is an army of secret agents larger than the combined forces of the Treasury and the Post Office Departments. His orders extend to every corner of the country. As the legal adviser of the Administration, he is looked to by the President and every member of the Cabinet for counsel and guidance. The success or failure of the Administration's policies with respect to the enforcement of the federal laws depends upon him. And the nation at large has had opportunity to know that the new Attorney-General looks upon the requirements of his job from a common-sense point of view.

"The theory of the law in regard to trusts," he has been heard to say, "is that competition is always desirable. Competition tends to produce better service and more consideration for the customer in the matter of accommodation. Naturally, if you have the choice of two or more dealers in a commodity, you, as a customer, are likely to receive better treatment than if you had to buy from one dealer.

"Sometimes you will find a trust furnishing an article for a less price than it was furnished before the trust was formed. You then, naturally, will say that the trust is a good thing. But the fact that a trust may be what has been termed a 'good trust' today does not mean that, having the power, it might not become. a 'bad trust' tomorrow.

"Possession of the power to suppress competition, then, as well as actual suppression, is undesirable.

"The purpose of the Government in the anti-trust prosecution. is measurably to restore or protect competition, and to do this in a reasonable way, and in such a manner as to do as little damage to legitimate industrial and financial conditions as possible, while vindicating the law."

A NEGLECTED MASTERPIECE.

BY CHARLES MINOR BLACKFORD, M. D., '88.

From time to time in the history of the human intellect, there have appeared works that have marked the beginning of a new era in human thought and have revolutionized the conceptions of the universe that have previously been held. The announcement of the Copernican theory of the solar system, the setting forth of Newton's law of gravity, the atomic theory in chemistry, are among these epoch-making events, but the work that has had the most far reaching effect on human thought has been unquestionably the "Origin of Species," published by Charles Darwin in 1859. This book appeared in November of that year, and everyone knows the battle that raged about it. Probably no book has ever been published that was more ruthlessly attacked and more desperately defended. On behalf of the main idea laid down in it, a wonderful coterie of philosophers and scientists arose; men like Huxley, Wallace, Herbert Spencer, Haeckel and others, who were of world wide repute. These men spread the conception of evolution, of slow changes and adaptation to altered conditions as need arose, to matters far removed from zoology. Spencer applied it to sociology, and in his matchless style made political students see that no other hypothesis will explain the history of nationalities, laws and customs. Today the doctrine of evolution ranks with the theory of gravity, the conservation of energy, or any of the basal scientific dogmas that are accepted without question.

But while the name and fame of Darwin have rung around the world, and the "Origin of Species" is found in every important library, there is a work on the same subject in which the same idea is brought out with an equal amount of learning, which has been largely overlooked. In May, 1859, six months before the "Origin of Species" appeared, Dr. James Lawrence Cabell, professor of physiology in the University of Virginia, published a work entitled "The Testimony of Modern Science to the Unity of Mankind, being a Summary of the Conclusions announced by the Highest Authorities in the Several Departments of Physiology, Zoology, and Comparative Philology in Favor of the Spe

cific Unity and Common Origin of all the Varieties of Man. By J. L. Cabell, M. D., Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology in the University of Virginia. With an Introductory Notice by James W. Alexander, D. D. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, No. 530 Broadway, 1859.”

Americans may well be proud of this book, as it states many of the biological laws that are now recognized, but were then practically unknown, and, strange to say, cites many of the very same instances used later by Huxley and Darwin to support them. Among these we find, on page 22, that by changing the food and environment, "we may modify to an extent sometimes quite considerable the outward structural character of many plants and low animal organisms; and these newly acquired characters may then be perpetuated by hereditary transmission, under the influence of the law of assimilation between parent and offspring, even though the causes that originally determined the variation from the primitive type have ceased to operate. A similar effect is produced in those cases in which a given variation appears accidentally in a single individual and is then transmitted to his offspring. * * * In other words, a permanent variety is likely to arise." In "The Origin of Species," chapter one, in speaking of variations, Darwin says: "We are driven. to conclude that this great variability is due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent species had been exposed under Nature." The same idea is here expressed in somewhat different words, and Darwin's views. as to the transmission of such peculiarities by heredity are too familiar to be repeated.

In illustration of the law thus laid down, Cabell cites the familiar story of the origin of the Ancon or Otter sheep from a spontaneous variation occurring in the flock of Seth Wright in Massachusetts; and it may be remembered that Huxley uses the same instance to bring out the same point, but without acknowledging its previous use by Cabell. Dr. Cabell further calls attention to the changes arising in the horses and cattle that were brought to this continent as domesticated animals, but escaped into the forests and plains, and he shows that without admixture with another strain (for these animals are not indigenous) va

rieties arose that differed so widely from the parent stock as to constitute new species. On the other hand he shows that the hog, an exotic animal brought here under domestication, reverted to the primitive type. So striking is this account that it will repay copying in full. Says Dr. Cabell (page 32): "The hog is known not to be indigenous in this country, but was introduced into St. Domingo at the first discovery of that island in 1493, and successively to all the places where the Spaniards formed settlements. These animals multiplied with great rapidity and soon infested the forests in large herds. At length, under the influence of their wild state, they have resumed the characters of the original stock-that is, their appearance very closely resembles that of the European wild boar, from which the domesticated breeds have sprung. Their ears have become erect, their heads are larger, and their foreheads vaulted at the upper part; their color has lost the variety found in the domestic breeds, the wild hogs of the American forests being uniformly black. The hog which inhabits the high mountains of Paramos bears a striking resemblance to the wild boar of France. His skin is covered with a thick fur, often somewhat crisp, beneath which is found in some individuals a species of wool. Thus the restoration of the original characters of the wild boar in a race known to have sprung from domesticated swine brought over to America by the Spaniards, removes all reason for doubt, if any had existed, as to the identity of the wild and domesticated stocks in Europe, and we may safely proceed to compare the physical characters of these races as varieties which have arisen in one species."

As will be remembered, the leading instance of reversion cited in "The Origin of Species" is the tendency of fancy breeds of pigeons to return to the "Blue Rock," from which fact Mr. Darwin concludes it to be the original type. As the hog is a more highly organized animal than is the pigeon, the flexibility of species is more strikingly shown in it than in the oviparous pigeon.

As suggested above, it is probable that much of the interest attracted by the "Origin of Species" was due to the brilliant exposition of Mr. Huxley; but, aside from that, unquestionably the chief reason that so many without the ranks of professional