Romanes's support of his claims by anecdotal evidence, rather than empirical tests, prompted C. Lloyd Morgan's warning against Romanes's methods, Morgan's Canon of Interpretation.
Romanes was born in Kingston, Ontario, the third son of George Romanes, a scottish Presbyterian minister. When he was two years old, his parents returned to England, and he sent the rest of his life in England. Like many English naturalists, he nearly studied divinity, but instead opted to study medicine and physiology at Cambridge University. He matriculated from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge with a Batchelor of Arts in 1870. It was at Cambridge that he came first to the attention of Charles Darwin; the two remained friends for life.
Romanes founded a series of free public lectures - still running to the present day- which are named the Romanes Lectures after him. He was a close friend of Thomas Henry Huxley, who gave the second Romanes lecture.
Publications
Candid Examination of Theism (pseudonymously published as "Physicus"), (1878)
Animal Intelligence, (1881)
The Scientific Evidences of organic evolution (1881)
Mental Evolution in Animals, (1883)
Physiological Selection: An Additional Suggestion on the Origin of Species, (1886)
GeorgeRomanes must have travelled that road often while courting the younger sister of the Rev. John Smith, minister of the Kirk in Beckwith township, Their banns were entered in the Beckwith minutes, and they were married on August 12, 1835.
The Rev. GeorgeRomanes, a graduate of Edinburgh University, licentiated to preach, was a local missionary in the capital.
The Rev. GeorgeRomanes in 1866 on the motion of Professor Murray, seconded by Professor Williamson, was elected Fellow in the Faculty of Law of Queen's University.
Romanes objects to the assumption of Darwin, "that the same variation occurs simultaneously in a number of individuals," adding: "Of course, if this assumption were granted, there would be an end of the present difficulty"; and his whole argument on this branch of the question rests on the assumption being false.
Romanes states, as the special feature of his physiological varieties, that "they cannot escape the preserving agency of physiological selection." He gives no particle of proof of this, while I show that, on the contrary, it is hardly possible for them to survive to a second or third generation.
Romanes speaks of his supposed variations as "showing some degree of sterility with the parent form," while continuing to be fertile "within the limits of the varietal form"; but I hold that any such variety (beyond single individuals) can hardly exist, while he has adduced no proof whatever of their existence.
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