Romanes

Romanes, GEORGE JOHN, naturalist, was born at Kingston, Canada, on 20th May 1848, and after a private education in London and on the Continent entered Caius College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1870 with natural science honours. While still at the university he formed a friendship with Darwin, and he has powerfully reinforced his master's arguments in his Croonian, Fullerian, and other lectures, and in his various works—Animal Intelligence (1881); Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution (1881); Mental Evolution in Animals (1883); Jelly-fish, Star-fish, and Sea-urchins (1885); Mental Evolution in Man (1888); Darwin and after Darwin (1892); Examination of Weismannism (1893; see WEISMANN). This most fertile English writer on the theories and philosophy of modern biology died 23d May 1894. His posthumous Thoughts on Religion, edited by Canon Gore, showed that, once a defiant agnostic, he had become almost, if not altogether, a Christian; and in this spirit he had before his death revised his Candid Examination of Theism (1878). He was F.R.S. and LL.D. See his Life and Letters by his wife (1896), and his Poems (1896).