The Effect of External Influences upon Development. With Annotations by the Author. The Romanes Lecture 1894. Delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre, May 2, 1894.

69 pp. Original cloth. A fair copy only, with some splitting to the binding (see photos). 'The Romanes Lecture is the annual public lecture of the University. A most distinguished public figure from the arts, science or literature is invited by special invitation of the Vice-Chancellor. The lecture was created in 1891, following an offer by George John Romanes of Christ Church to fund an annual lecture, and the first lecture was given in 1892 by William Gladstone.' 'The Romanes Lecture for 1894, as now published, is considerably longer than as originally spoken. In reading the Lecture some portions were omitted, which, although essential for the full appreciation of the argument, were not required for understanding its main drift. These passages have been restored to the text; and some notes have been added. I am indebted to Mr. Gregg Wilson for translating the Lecture into English, and to Prof. W. N. Parker for much help in the revision. The manuscript had already gone to press when the news reached me of the sudden death of the Founder of the Lectureship. George Romanes has gone from among us. Though the state of his health for the last few years had made it improbable that a long life would be granted to him, no one thought the end was so near when, on the 2nd of May, he was present at the delivery of this lecture and followed it with a lively interest. His early death is a sad loss to the science for which he had still much to achieve; yet few have better used the time fate has allowed them. He worked with unwearying energy, and a long list of valuable writings bear witness to his line gift of observation, his keen critical intelligence, and his great facility of exposition. In the very last month of his life he had set himself to solve a problem which he had originally, with prophetic insight, put forward a considerable time ago, and which he again followed out with increasing interest when biological enquiry had brought it to the front. Thus his ceaseless energy ended only with his life. Of him it may be said—and nothing higher can be said of any distinguished man—he used to the greatest possible extent the gifts with which Nature had so abundantly supplied him' (Preface). 'Not only did questions about the validity of the inheritance of acquired characters loom as a central topic in biology during the 1890s, but Weismann focused a good deal of his effort on responding to his critics and defending his Keimplasma. As we have seen, a significant amplification to his germ-plasm theory began in 1894 when in the Romanes Lecture he expanded upon his notion of germinal selection' (Frederick Churchill, 'The Germ-Plasm and the Diversity of Living Phenomena: 1890–1900', Chapter 18, pp. 470-488 in: August Weismann: Development, Heredity, and Evolution, Harvard University Press, 2015).…