GIFT OF
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THE CENTURY SCIENCE SERIES

EDITED BY SIR HENRY E. ROSCOE, U.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S.

CHARLES DARWIK

AND THE

THEORY OP NATURAL SELECTION

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Justus von Liebig : his Life and Work (1803-1873).

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Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher.

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Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural
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STATUE OF CHARLES DARWIN.

(By Bochm.}

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THE CENTURY SCIENCE SERIES

CHARLES DARWIN

AND THE

THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION

EDWARD B. POULT ON

1 1

M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S., F.L.S., ETC.

HOPE PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

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CORRESP. MEMB. OF THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF XAT. HIST.

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INTRODUCTION

IN the following pages I have tried to express a sense
of the greatness of ray subject by simplicity and
directness of statement. The limits of the work
necessarily prevented any detailed treatment, the
subject of the work prevented originality. We have
had the great " Life and Letters " with us for nine
years, and this I have used as a mine, extracting
what I believed to be the statements of chief im-
portance for the work in hand, and grouping them
so as to present what I hope is a connected account
of Darwin's life, when considered in relation to his
marvellous work; and especially to the great central
discovery of Natural Selection and its exposition in
the " Origin of Species."

In addition to the invaluable volumes which we
owe to the industry, taste, and skill of Francis
Darwin, an immense number of other works have
been consulted. We live in an age of writing, and
of speeches and addresses ; and the many sides of
Darwin's life and work have again and again inspired
the ablest men of our time to write and speak their
best — a justification for the freedom with which
quotations are spread over the following pages.

VI INTRODUCTION.

It is my pleasant duty to express my hearty
thanks to many Tdnd friends who have helped in
the production of this little work. Mr. Francis
Darwin has kindly permitted the use of many of
Darwin's letters, which have not as yet been published,
and he has given me valuable information and
criticism on many points. I have also gained much
by discussion and correspondence with my friends
Dr. A. R. Wallace, Professor E. Ray Lankester, and
Professor Meldola. The latter has freely given me
the use of his valuable series of letters ; and I owe
to my friend, Mr. Rowland H. Wedgwood, the oppor-
tunity of publishing a single letter of very great
interest.

The greater part of the volume formed the subject
of two short courses of lectures delivered in the Hope
Department of the Oxford University Museum in
Michaelmas Term 1894 and Lent Term 1895.

EDWARD B. POULTON.

Oxford, October, 1896.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — THE SECRET OF DARWIN'S GREATNESS .... 9
II. — BOYHOOD — EDINBURGH — CAMBRIDGE (1817-31) . . 16

HI._VOYAGE OF THE "BEAGLE" (1831-36) .... 21

IV. — CAMBRIDGE — LONDON — WORK UPON THE COLLECTIONS
— MARRIAGE — GEOLOGICAL WORK — JOURNAL OF
THE VOYAGE — CORAL REEFS — FIRST RECORDED
THOUGHTS ON EVOLUTION (1837-42) . . . 25

V. — DOWN — GEOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE — WORK ON CIR-

RIPEDES (1842-54) 35

VI.— THE GROWTH OF THE "ORIGIN OF SPECIES" (1837-58) 42

VII. — GROWTH OF THE " ORIGIN " (continued) — CORRESPOND-
ENCE WITH FRIENDS ...... 50

VIII.— DARWIN AND WALLACE (1858) 60

IX. — DARWIN'S SECTION OF THE JOINT MEMOIR READ

BEFORE THE LlNNEAN SOCIETY JULY 1, 1858 . 65

X. — WALLACE'S SECTION OF THE JOINT MEMOIR READ

BEFORE THE LlNNEAN SOCIETY JULY 1, 1858 . 71

XL— COMPARISON OF DARWIN'S AND WALLACE'S SECTIONS
OF THE JOINT MEMOIR— RECEPTION OF THEIR
VIEWS— THEIR FRIENDSHIP 78

XII. — THE GROWTH OP WALLACE'S CONVICTIONS ON EVOLU-
TION AND DISCOVERY OF NATURAL SELECTION —
BORNEO 1855— TERNATE 1858 . 87

Vlll CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

XIII. — CANON TRIST»AM THE FIRST PUBLICLY TO ACCEPT

THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION (1859) . 92

XIV. — THE PREPARATION OF THE " ORIGIN OF SPECIES "

(1858-59) 95

XV.— THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (1859) 100

XVL— THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON LYELL (1859-64). 105

XVII. — INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON HOOKER AND ASA GRAY
— NATURAL SELECTION AND DESIGN IN NATURE
(1860-68) Ill

XVIII. — INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON HUXLEY . . .119

XIX. — THE DIFFICULTY WITH WHICH THE " ORIGIN " WAS

UNDERSTOOD 144

XX. — THE DIFFICULTY WITH WHICH THE " ORIGIN " WAS
UNDERSTOOD (continued] — VIEWS ON SPONTANEOUS
GENERATION . . . . . . . .153

XXI. — VARIATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS UNDER DOMES-
TICATION : PANGENESIS (1868) .... 161

XXII. — PANGENESIS AND CONTINUITY OF THE GERM-PLASM :

DARWIN'S CONFIDENCE IN PANGENESIS . . .178

XXIII. — DESCENT OF MAN — EXPRESSION OF EMOTIONS —

EARTH-WORMS (1871-81) 186

XXIV.— BOTANICAL WORKS (1862-86) 193

XXV. — LETTERS FROM DARWIN TO PROFESSOR MELDOLA

(1871-82) 199

XXVI.— His LAST ILLNESS (1882) 219

INDEX 221

CHARLES DARWIN

AND THE

THEOEY OF NATURAL SELECTION.
CHAPTER I

THE SECRET OF DARWIN'S GREATNESS.

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN was bom at Shrewsbury
on February 12th, 1809, the year which witnessed
the birth of Alfred Tennyson, W. E. Gladstone, and
Abraham Lincoln.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, born in the same year,
delighted to speak of the good company in which
he came into the world. On January 27th, 1894,
I had the great pleasure of sitting next to him at a
dinner of the Saturday Club in Boston, and he then
spoke of the subject with the same enthusiasm with
which he deals with it in his writings; mentioning
the four distinguished names, and giving a brief
epigrammatic description of each with characteristic
felicity. Dr. Holmes further said that he remembered
with much satisfaction an occasion on which he was
able to correct Darwin on a matter of scientific fact.
He could not remember the details, but we may hope

10 CHARLES DARWIN.

for their ultimate recovery, for he said that Darwin
had written a courteous reply accepting the correction.

Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin
(1731-1802), was a man of great genius. He
speculated upon the origin of species, and arrived
at views which were afterwards independently enun-
ciated by Lamarck. He resembled this great zoologist
in fertility of imagination, and also in the boldness
with which he put forward suggestions, many of
which were crude and entirely untested by an appeal
to facts. The poetical form in which a part of
his work was written was, doubtless, largely due
to the traditions and customs of the age in which
he lived.

Robert Waring (1766-1848), the father of Charles
Darwin, was the second son of Erasmus. He married
a daughter of the great Josiah Wedgwood. Although
his mother died when he was only eight years old,
and Darwin remembered very little of her, there is
evidence that she directed his attention to Nature
("Autobiography," p. 28, footnote). Dr. Darwin fol-
lowed his father's profession, commencing a very
successful medical practice at Shrewsbury before he
was twenty-one. He was a man of great penetration,
especially in the discernment of character — a power
which was of the utmost value to him in his pro-
fession. Dr. Darwin had two sons and four daughters :
Charles was the younger son and fourth child, his
brother Erasmus being the third.

Even in this mere outline there is evidence of

HIS FAMILY. 11

hereditary genius in the Darwin family — evidence
which becomes irresistible when all available details
of every member of the family are brought together,
as they are in the great " Life and Letters." When
it is further remembered that two of Charles Darwin's
sons have achieved distinction as scientific investiga-
tors, it will be admitted that the history of the
family affords a most striking example of hereditary
intellectual power.

There is nothing in this history to warrant the
belief that the nature and direction of hereditary
genius receive any bias from the line of intellectual
effort pursued by a parent. We recognise the
strongest evidence for hereditary capacity, but none
at all for the transmission of results which follow
the employment of capacity. Thus Erasmus inherited
high intellectual power, with a bias entirely different
from that of his younger brother Charles — his in-
terests being literary and artistic rather than scientific.
The wide difference between the brothers seems to
have made a great impression upon Charles, for he
wrote : —

" Our minds and tastes were, however, so different, that I
do not think I owe much to him intellectually. I am inclined
to agree with Francis Galton in believing that education and
environment produce only a small effect on the mind of any-
one, and that most of our qualities are innate " (" Life and
Letters," 1887, p. 22).

Equally significant is the fact that Professor George
Darwin's important researches in mathematics have

12 CHARLES DARWIN.

been applied to astronomy — subjects which were
not pursued by hJS father.

It appears probable that Charles Darwin's unique
power was largely due to the inheritance of the
imagination of his grandfather combined with the
acute observation of his father. Although he possessed
an even larger share of both these qualities than his
predecessors, it is probable that he owed more to
their co-operation than to the high degree of their
development.

It is a common error to suppose that the in-
tellectual powers which make the poet or the
historian are essentially different from those which
make the man of science. Powers of observation,
however acute, could never make a scientific dis-
coverer; for discovery requires the creative effort of
the imagination. The scientific man does not stumble
upon new facts or conclusions by accident ; he finds
what he looks for. The problem before him is
essentially similar to that of the historian who tries
to create an accurate and complete picture of an
epoch out of scattered records of contemporary im-
pressions more or less true, and none wholly true.
Fertility of imagination is absolutely essential for
that step from, the less to the more perfectly known
which we call discovery.

But fertility of imagination alone is insufficient
for the highest achievement in poetry, history, or
science; for in all these subjects the strictest self-
criticism and the soundest judgment are necessary in

CHARACTER AND POWERS. 13

order to ensure that the results are an advance in the
direction of the truth. A delicately-adjusted balance
between the powers of imagination and the powers
which hold imagination in check, is essential in the
historian who is to provide us with a picture of a
past age, which explains the mistaken impression
gained by a more or less prejudiced observer who
saw but a small part of it from a limited standpoint,
and has handed down his impression to us. A poem
Avhich sheds new light upon the relation between
mind and rnind, requires to be tested and controlled
by constant and correct observation, like a hypothesis
in tjie domain of the natural sciences.

It is probable, then, that the secret of Darwin's
strength lay in the perfect balance between his powers
of imagination and those of accurate observation, the
creative efforts of the one being ever subjected to the
most relentless criticism by the employment of the
other. We shall never know, I have heard Professor
Michael Foster say, the countless hypotheses which
passed through the mind of Darwin, and which, how-
ever wild and improbable, were tested by an appeal
to Nature, and were then dismissed for ever.

Darwin's estimate of his own powers is given
with characteristic candour and modesty in the con-
cluding paragraph of his " Autobiography " (" Life and
Letters," 1887, p. 107) :—

" Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this
may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can
judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and

14 CHARLES DARWIN.

conditions. Of these, the most important have been— the love
of science — unboun^d patience in long reflecting over any
subject — industry in observing and collecting facts — and a
fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With
such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that
I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of
scientific men on some important points."

We also know from other sources that Darwin looked
upon the creative powers as essential to scientific
progress. Thus he wrote to Wallace in 1857 : " I
am a firm believer that without speculation there is
no good and original observation." He also says in
the " Autobiography " : "I have steadily endeavoured
to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis,
however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming
one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to
be opposed to it."

I have thought it worth while to insist thus
strongly on the high value attached by Darwin to
hypothesis, controlled by observation, in view of
certain recent attacks upon this necessary weapon
for scientific advance. Thus Bateson, in his " Materials
for the Study of Variation" (London, 1894), p. 7,
says : " In the old time the facts of Nature were
beautiful in themselves and needed not the rouge of
speculation to quicken their charm, but that was long
ago before Modern Science was born." The author
does not specify the period in the history of science
when discovery proceeded without hypothesis. A
study of the earlier volumes of the Philosophical
Transactions reveals a far greater interest in specula-

VALUE OF HYPOTHESIS. 15

tion than in the facts of Nature. We can hardly call
those ages anything but speculative which received
with approval the suggestions that geese were de-
veloped from barnacles which grew upon trees ; that
swallows hibernated at the bottom of lakes ; that the
Trade-winds were due to the breath of a sea-weed.
Bateson's statement requires to be reversed in order
to become correct. Modern science differs from the
science of long ago in its greater attention to the
facts of Nature and its more rigid control over the
tendency to hypothesis ; although hypothesis remains,
and must ever remain, as the guide and inspirer of
observation and the discovery of fact.* Although
Darwin has kindled the imagination of hundreds of
workers, and has thus been the cause of an immense
amount of speculation, science owes him an even
larger debt for the innumerable facts discovered
under the guidance of this faculty.

* See Professor Meldola's interesting Presidential Address to
the Entomological Society of London (January, 1896) on the use of
the imagination in science, printed in the Transactions of the Society
and in Nature. See also " The Advancement of Science " (London,
1890), in which Professor Lankester maintains (p. 4): "All true
science deals with speculation and hypothesis, and acknowledges as
its most valued servant — its indispensable ally and helpmeet — that
which our German friends call ' Phantasie ' and we ' the Imagina-
tion.' " Consult also Professor Tyndall's essay " On the Scientific Use
of the Imagination" ("Fragments of Science," 1889, vol. ii., p. 101).

16

CHAPTER II.

BOYHOOD — EDINBURGH — CAMBRIDGE (1817-31).

OF Darwin's boyhood and school-life we only know
the facts given in his brief " Autobiography," written
when he was sixty-seven, together with those collected
by his son Francis and appended in the form of notes.
He first went to Mr. Case's day-school in Shrewsbury
in 1817, the year of his mother's death. At this
time, although only eight years old, his interest in
natural history and in collecting was well established.
" The passion for collecting, which leads a man to be
a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was
very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of
my sisters or brother had this taste."

In the following year he went to Dr. Butler's
school in Shrewsbury, where he remained seven years.
He does not appear to have profited much by the
classical instruction which at that time received
almost exclusive attention. His interest seems to
have been chiefly concentrated upon sport ; but
whenever a subject attracted him he worked hard
at it, and it is probable that he would have conveyed
a very different impression of his powers to the
masters and his father if scientific subjects had been
taught, as they are now to a moderate extent in
many schools.

AT EDINBURGH. 17

That he was a keen observer for his age is clear
from the fact that, when he was only ten, he was
much interested and surprised to notice that the
insects he found on the Welsh coast were different
from those in Shropshire. His most valuable educa-
tion was received out of school hours — collecting,
and working at chemistry with his brother Erasmus,
although this latter study drew down upon him
the rebukes of Dr. Butler for wasting time on such
useless subjects.

He was removed from school early, and in 1825
went to Edinburgh to study medicine — a subject for
which he seemed to be unfitted by nature. The
methods of instruction by lectures did not benefit
him ; he was disgusted at dissection, and could not
endure to witness an operation. And yet here it was
evident, as it became afterwards at Cambridge, that
Darwin — although seeming to be by no means above
the average when judged by ordinary standards —
possessed in reality a very remarkable and attractive
personality. There can be no other explanation of
the impression he made upon distinguished men who
were much older than himself, and the friendships
he formed with those of his own age who were
afterwards to become eminent.

Thus at Edinburgh he was well acquainted with
Dr. Grant and Mr. Macgillivray, the curator of the
museum, and worked at marine zoology in company
with the former. Here, too,, in 1826, he made his
first scientific discovery, and read a paper before the

18 CHARLES DARWIN.

Plinian Society, proving that so-called eggs of Flustra
were in reality "free-swimming larvae. And it is
evident from his " Autobiography " that he took
every opportunity of hearing and learning about
scientific subjects.

Darwin's love of sport remained as keen as ever
at this period and at Cambridge, and he speaks with
especial enthusiasm of his visits in the autumn to
Maer, the home of his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, who
afterwards exerted so important an influence upon
his life.

After Darwin had been at Edinburgh for two
sessions, his father realised that he did not like the
thought of the medical profession, and suggested
that he should become a clergyman. With this
intention he was sent to Cambridge in the beginning
of 1828, after spending some months in recovering
the classics he had learnt at school.

He joined Christ's College, and passed his final
examination in January, 1831, being tenth in the list
of those who do not seek honours. The immense,
and in many respects disastrous, development of the
competitive examination system since that time has
almost banished from our universities the type of
student represented by Darwin — the man who takes
the easiest road to a degree and obtains it with the
minimum of effort, but who all the time is being
benefited by residence, studying, without any thought
of examinations, the subjects which are of special
interest to him, and seeking personal contact with

AT CAMBRIDGE. 19

older men who have reached the highest eminence
in those subjects.

He seems to have led a somewhat double life at
Cambridge, his intense love of sport taking him into
a pleasure-loving set, while his intellectual interests
made him the intimate friend of Whitley, who became
Senior Wrangler, and of Professor Henslow, to whom
he was introduced by his second cousin, W. Darwin
Fox, who also first interested him in entomology. He
became so keen a collector of beetles that his suc-
cesses and experiences in this direction seem to have
impressed him more deeply than anything else at
Cambridge. Entomology, and especially beetles, form
the chief subject of those of his Cambridge letters
which have been recovered.

Darwin's friendship with Henslow, which was to
have a most important effect on his life, very soon
deepened. They often went long walks together, so
that he was called " the man who walks with Hens-
low." This fact and the subsequent rapidly formed
intimacy with Professor Adam Sedgwick, indicate
that he was remarkable among the young men of his
standing.

One of his undergraduate friends, J. M. Herbert,
afterwards County Court Judge for South Whales,
retained the most vivid recollection of Darwin at
Cambridge, and contributed the following impression
of his character to the " Life and Letters " :—

" It would be idle for me to speak of his vast intellectual
powers . . . but I cannot end this cursory arid rambling

20 CHARLES DARWIN.

sketch without testifying, and I doubt not all his surviving
college friends woulcT concur with me, that he was the most
genial, warm-hearted, generous and affectionate of friends ;
that his sympathies were with all that was good and true;
and that he had a cordial hatred for everything false, or vile,
or cruel, or mean, or dishonourable. He was not only great,
but pre-eminently good, and just, and loveable."

Two books greatly influenced Darwin — Herschel's
" Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy,"
which, he said, " stirred up in me a burning zeal to
add even the most humble contribution to the
noble structure of Natural Science " ; and Humboldt's
" Personal Narrative," which roused in him the
longing to travel — a desire which was soon afterwards
gratified by his voyage in the Beagle.

" Upon the whole," he says, " the three years
which I spent at Cambridge were the most joyful in
my happy life ; for I was then in excellent health,
and almost always in high spirits."

After passing his last examination, Darwin had
still two terms' residence to keep, and was advised by
Henslow to study geology. To this end Henslow
asked Sedgwick to allow Darwin to go with him on
a geological excursion in North Wales in August,
1831. He thus gained experience which was of the
utmost value during the voyage of the Beagle.

CHAPTER III.

VOYAGE OF THE "BEAGLE" (1831-36).

ABOUT the time of the excursion with Sedgwick (the
exact date is uncertain) Professor Henslow received
a letter from George Peacock (formerly Dean of Ely
and Lowndean Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge)
stating that he had the offer to recommend a young
man as naturalist to accompany Captain Fitzroy on
a surveying expedition to many parts of the world.
Leonard Jenyns (afterwards Blomefield) was evi-
dently considered to be the most suitable person
for the position, but he was unable to accept it.
Henslow at once wrote (August 24th, 1831) to Darwin,
and advised him to do his utmost to obtain the
position, and Darwin found the letter waiting for him
on his return home after the geological excursion
with Sedgwick. As his father greatly disliked the
idea, Darwin at once wrote (August 30th) and declined,
and the next day went to Maer to be ready for the
shooting on September 1st. Here, however, his
uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, took a very different view
from that adopted by his father, with the result that
both he and Darwin wrote (August 31st) to Shrews-
bury and reopened the question. Darwin's letter
shows the most touching deference to his father's
wishes, and the gravest apprehension lest he should

'

22 CHARLES DARWIN.

be rendered " uncomfortable " or " uneasy " by any
further suggestion as to the possibility of the voyage,
although his father had said, " If you can find any
man of common-sense who advises you to go, I will
give my consent." We also learn from the " Auto-
biography" that his uncle sent for him whilst out
shooting and drove him the thirty miles to Shrews-
bury, in order that they might talk with his father,
who then at once consented. This must have been
on September 1st, 1831.

From this time until he went to Plymouth, on
October 24th — the final start was not until December
27th — his letters show that he had a very busy time
making purchases and preparing for the voyage.
These letters breathe the warmest affection to the
members of his family and his friends, together with
the keenest enthusiasm for Captain Fitzroy, the ship,
and the voyage.

The voyage of the Beagle lasted from December
27th, 1831, to October 2nd, 1836. pDarwin says that
it was " by far the most important event in my life,
and has determined my whole career. ... I have
always felt that I owe to the voyage the first real
training or education of my mind " (1. c., p. 61). He
attributes the greatest share in this training to
geology, among the special sciences, because of the
reasoning involved in making out the structure of
a new and unknown district ; but he considers that
the habits of " energetic industry and of concentrated
attention " which he then acquired were of the utmost

VOYAGE IN THE "BEAGLE." 23

importance, and the secret of all his success in science.
He tells us that the love of sport was present at first
in all its keenness, but that he gradually abandoned
it for scientific work.

Among his numerous observations and discoveries
during the voyage, those which appear to stand out
in his mind so that he quotes them in his "Auto-
biography " are — the explanation of the forms of coral
islands, the geological structure of St. Helena and
other islands, and the relations between the animals
and plants of the several Galapagos islands to each
other and to those of South America. His letters
and the collections which he sent home attracted
much attention ; and Sedgwick told Dr. Darwin that
his son would take a place among the leading scientific
men. When Darwin heard this from his sisters, he
says, " I clambered over the mountains of Ascension
with a bounding step, and made the volcanic rocks
resound under my geological hammer." His letters
during the voyage are full of enthusiasm and of
longing to return to his family and friends.

There was the same conflict between the naval
and scientific departments of the Beagle on the un-
tidiness of the decks which was afterwards repeated on
the Challenger, where I have been told that one of the
naval authorities used to say, with resigned disgust,
" Oh, no, we're not a man-of-war, we're only a -
dredger ! "

In the course of the voyage the following countries
and islands were visited in the order given : — The

24 CHARLES DARWIN.

Cape de Verde Islands, St. Paul's Rocks, Fernando
Noronha, South "America (including the Galapagos
Archipelago, the Falkland Islands, and Tierra del
Fuego), Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania,
Keeling Island, Maldive Coral Atolls, Mauritius, St.
Helena, Ascension. Brazil was then visited again
for a short time, the Beagle touching at the Cape de
Verde Islands and the Azores on the voyage home.

Darwin says, concerning the intellectual effect of
his work during the voyage : —

"That my mind became developed through my pursuits
during the voyage is rendered probable by a remark made by
my father, who was the most acute observer whom I ever saw,
of a sceptical disposition, and far from being a believer in
phrenology ; for on first seeing me after the voyage lie turned
round to my sisters, and exclaimed, ' Why the shape of his
head is quite altered ! ' " (I. c., pp. 63, G4).

25

CHAPTER IV.

CAMBRIDGE — LONDON — WORK UPON THE COLLECTIONS
— MARRIAGE — GEOLOGICAL WORK — JOURNAL OF
THE VOYAGE — CORAL REEFS — FIRST RECORDED
THOUGHTS ON EVOLUTION (1837-42).

DARWIN reached England October 2nd, 1836, and
was home at Shrewsbury October 5th (according to
his Letters ; the 4th is the date given by Francis
Darwin in the " Life and Letters "). The two years
and three months which followed he describes as
the most active ones he ever spent. After visiting
his family, he stayed three months in Cambridge,
working at his collection of rocks, writing his
" Naturalist's Voyage," and one or two scientific
papers. He then (March 7th, 1837) took lodgings
in 36, Great Marlborough Street, London, where he
remained until his marriage, January 29th, 1839.
The apathy of scientific men — even those in charge
of museums — caused him much depression, and he
found great difficulty in getting specialists to work
out his collections, although the botanists seem to
have been keener than the zoologists.

The commencement of his London residence is of
the deepest interest, as the time at which he began
to reflect seriously on the origin of species. Thus he

26 CHARLES DARWIX.

says in the " Autobiography " : — " In July I opened
my first note-book for facts in relation to the Origin
of Species, about which I had long reflected, and
never ceased working for the next twenty years."
Furthermore, his pocket-book for 1837 contained
the words : — " In July opened first note-book on
Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck
from about the month of previous March" (he was
then just over twenty-eight years old) "on character
of South American fossils, and species on Galapagos
Archipelago. These facts (especially latter) origin of
all my views." It is, perhaps, worth while to explain
in greater detail the nature of this evidence which
appealed so strongly to Darwin's mind. The Edentata
(sloths, ant-eaters, armadilloes, etc.) have their metro-
polis in South America, and in the later geological
formations of this country the skeletons of gigantic
extinct animals of the same order (Megatherium,
Mylodon, Glyptodon, etc.) are found ; and Darwin
was doubtless all the more impressed by discovering
such remains for himself. In his " Autobiography "
he says: "During the voyage of the Beagle I had
been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean
formation great fossil animals covered with armour
like that on existing armadilloes ;...."

Darwin was thus led to conclude that there was
some genetic connection between the animals which
have succeeded each other in the same district ; for
in a theory of destructive cataclysms, followed by
re-creations — or, indeed, in any theory of special

THE GALAPAGOS. 27

creation — there seemed no adequate reason why the
successive forms should belong to the same order. In
his " Naturalist's Voyage Round the World " he says,
speaking of this subject : " This wonderful relation-
ship in the same continent between the dead and the
living will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light
on the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and
their disappearance from it, than any other class of
facts" (p. 173 in the third edition).

The other class of evidence which impressed him
even more strongly was afforded by the relations
between the animals and plants of the several islands
of the Galapagos Archipelago and between those of
the Archipelago and of South America, nearly -600
miles to the East. Although the inhabitants of the
separate islands show an astonishing amount of
peculiarity, the species are nearly related, and also
exhibit American affinities. Concerning this, Darwin
writes in his "Voyage" (p. 398 in the third edi-
tion) : " Reviewing the facts here given, one is
astonished at the amount of creative force — if such
an expression may be used — displayed on these
small, barren, and rocky islands ; and still more so
at its diverse and yet analogous action on points so
near each other." Here, too, the facts were unintel-
ligible on a theory of separate creation of species, but
were at once explained if we suppose that the in-
habitants were the modified descendants of species
which had migrated from South America — the
migrations to the Archipelago and between the

28 CHARLES DARWIN.

separate islands being rendered extremely rare from
the depth of the1 sea, the direction of the currents,
and the absence of gales. In this way time for
specific modification was provided before the parti-
ally modified form could interbreed with the parent
species and thus lose its own newly - acquired
characteristics.

Although Darwin made these observations on the
Beagle, they required, as Huxley has suggested
(Obituary [1888], " Darwiniana " : Collected Essays,
vol. ii., pp. 274-275. London, 1893), careful and
systematic working out before they could be trusted
as a basis on which to speculate ; and this could not
be done until the return home. The following letter
written by Darwin to Dr. Otto Zacharias in 1877
confirms this opinion. It was sent to Huxley by
Francis Darwin, and is printed in " Darwiniana"
(I c., p. 275) :-

" When I was on board the ' Beagle,' I believed in the
permanence of species, but, as far as I can remember, vague
doubts occasionally flitted across my mind. On my return
home in the autumn of 1836, I immediately began to prepare
my journal for publication, and then saw how many facts
indicated the common descent of species, so that in July, 1837,
I opened a note-book to record any facts which might bear on
the question. But I did not become convinced that species
were mutable until I think two or three years had elapsed."

It is interesting to note that both the lines of
evidence which appealed to Darwin so strongly,
point to evolution, but not to any causes of
evolution. The majority of mankind were only con-

EARLY NOTES ON SPECIES. 29

vinced of this process when some conception as to
its causes had been offered to them ; Darwin took
the more logical course of first requiring evidence
that the process takes place, and then inquiring for
its causes.

The first indication of these thoughts in any of
his published letters is in one to his cousin Fox
written in June, 1838, in which, after alluding to
some questions he had previously asked about the
crossing of animals, he says, " It is my prime hobby,
and I really think some day I shall be able to do
something in that most intricate subject — species
and varieties."

He is rather more definite in a letter to Sir
Charles Lyell, written September 13th in the same
year : —

" I have lately been sadly tempted to be idle — that is, as far
as pure geology is concerned — by the delightful number of new
views which have been coming in thickly and steadily,— on the
classification and affinities and instincts of animals— bearing on
the question of species. Note-book after note-book has been
filled with facts which begin to group themselves clearly
under sub-laws."

On February 16th, 1838, he was appointed
Secretary of the Geological Society, a position which
he retained until February 1st, 1841. During these
two years after the voyage he saw much of Sir
Charles Lyell, whose teachings had been of the
greatest help to him during the voyage, and whose
method of appealing to natural causes rather than
supernatural cataclysms undoubtedly had a most

30 CHARLES DARWIN.

important influence on the development of Darwin's
mind. This influence he delighted to acknow-
ledge, dedicating to Lyell the second edition of his
" Voyage," " as an acknowledgment that the chief
part of whatever scientific merit this ' Journal '
and the other works of the author may possess has
been derived from studying the well-known and
admirable ' Principles of Geology.' "

At this period he finished his " Journal," which
was published in 1839 as Vol. III. of the " Narrative
of the Surveying Voyages of Her Majesty's Ships
Adventure and Beagle!' A second edition was pub-
lished in a separate form in 1845 as the " Journal of
Researches into the Natural History and Geology of
the Countries visited during the Voyage of H.M.S.
Beagle round the World, under the command of
Captain Fitz-Roy, R.N." ; and a third edition — but
very slightly altered — in 1860, under the title " A
Naturalist's Voyage : Journal' of Researches, etc."
This book is generally admitted to deserve above all
others the generous description which Darwin gave
to Sir Joseph Hooker of Belt's admirable " Naturalist
in Nicaragua " — as " the best of all Natural History
journals which have ever been published."

A comparison between the first and second
editions indicates, but by no means expresses, his
growing convictions on evolution and natural selec-
tion. Natural selection he had not discovered when
the MS. of the first edition was complete ; and if we
had no further evidence we could not, from any

UNIVERSITY
EARLY WORKS. :

passage in the work, maintain that he was convinced
of evolution. His great caution in dealing with so
tremendous a problem explains why the second
edition does not reflect the state of his mind at the
time of its publication. He tells us (" Autobiography ")
that in the preparation of this second edition he
" took much pains," and we may feel confident that
much of this care was given to the decision as to
how much he should reveal and how much withhold
of the thoughts which were occupying his mind, and
the conclusions to which he had at that time arrived.
That he did attribute much importance to the evolu-
tionary passages added in the second edition is shown
by his letter to Lyell (July, 1845), in which he alludes
to some of them, and specially asks Lyell to read the
pages on the causes of extinction.

He also edited and superintended the " Zoology
of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle" the special parts of
which were written by various eminent systematists,
and appeared separately between 1839 and 1843.

He also read several papers before the Geological
Society, including two (1838 and 1840) on the For-
mation of Mould by the Action of Earth- Worms — a
subject to which he returned, and upon which his
last volume (published in 1881) was written. He also
read a paper on the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy before
the Royal Society (published in the Phil. Trans.,
1839). These wonderful parallel terraces are now
admitted to be due to the changes of level in a lake
following those of an ice-barrier at the mouth of

32 CHARLES DARWIN.

the valley. At the time Darwin studied them, the
terraces were believed to have been formed by a lake
dammed back by a barrier of rock and alluvium ;
this he proved to be wrong, and as no other barrier
was then available — for the evidences of glaciation
had not then been discovered by Agassiz — he was
driven, on the method of exclusion, to the action of
the sea. Upon this subject he says, in the " Auto-
biography," "My error has been a good lesson to
me never to trust in science to the principle of
exclusion."

On January 29th, 1839, he married his cousin,,
Emma Wedgwood, the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood,
of Maer. They resided at 12, Upper Gower Street
until September 14th, 1842, when they settled at
Down.

The few graceful and touching words in which
Francis Darwin, in the " Life and Letters," alludes to
his father's married life show how deep is the debt of
gratitude which the world owes to Mrs. Darwin ; for
without her constant and loving care it would have
been impossible for Darwin to have accomplished his
life-work.

During these years in London his health broke
down many times ; so that he says, in the " Auto-
biography " : "I did less scientific work, though I
worked as hard as I possibly could, than during any
other equal length of time in my life." He chiefly
worked at his book on "The Structure and Distri-
bution of Coral Reefs," published in 1842 (second

ON CORAL REEFS. 33

edition in 1874). This work contains an account of
Darwin's well-known theory upon the origin of the
various coral formations — fringing reefs, barrier reefs,
and atolls — by the upward growth of the reef keep-
ing pace with the gradual sinking of the island upon
which it is based, so that the living corals always
remain at the surface under the most favourable
conditions, while beneath them is an ever-thickening
reef formed of dead coral, until at length, by con-
tinuing this process, the climax is reached in the
atoll, in which the original island has altogether
disappeared beneath the surface of a central lagoon
enclosed in a ring formed by the living edge of the
reef. This theory, after being accepted for many
years, has recently been disputed, chiefly as the
result of the observations made on the Challenger
expedition. It is contended by Dr. John Murray
" that it is not necessary to call in subsidence to
explain any of the characteristic features of barrier
reefs or atolls, and that all these features would exist
alike in areas of slow elevation, of rest, or of slow
subsidence" (Nature, August 12th, 1880, p. 337).
It cannot be said that this controversy is yet settled,
or that the supporters of either theory have proved
that the other does not hold — at any rate, in certain
cases.

Among his geological papers written at this time
was one describing the glacial phenomena observed
during a tour in North Wales. This paper (Philo-
sophical Magazine, 1842, p. 352) is placed by Sir

34 CHARLES DARWIN.

Archibald Geikie " almost at the top of the long list
of English contributions to the history of the Ice
Age."

At this time, too, he was reflecting and collecting
evidence for the great work of his life. Thus in
January, 1841, he writes to his cousin, Darwin Fox,
asking for " all kinds of facts about * Varieties and
Species.' "

35

CHAPTER Y.

DOWN — GEOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE — WORK ON
CIRRIPEDES (1842-54).

FROM September 14th, 1842, until his death, Darwin
resided at Down, living a very retired life, and almost
exclusively engaged in his scientific researches. Al-
though Down is only twenty miles from London, it
is three miles from the nearest railway station (Or-
pington), and is only now for the first time receiving
a telegraph office. A home in such a place enabled
Darwin to pursue his work without interruption,
remaining, at the same time, within easy reach of
all the advantages of London. Here, too, he had
no difficulty in avoiding social engagements, which
always injured his very precarious health, and thus
interfered with work ; although, at the same time,
he could entertain in his own house at such times
as he felt able to do so.

In 1844, and again in 1846, he published works
on the geology of the voyage of the Beagle ; the first
on the Volcanic Islands visited, the second on South
America. A second edition, in which both were com-
bined in a single work, appeared in 1876. He seemed
somewhat disappointed at the small amount of at-
tention they at first attracted, and wrote with much

36 CHARLES DARWIN.

humour to J. M. Herbert : — " I have long discovered
that geologists never read each other's works, and
that the only object in writing a book is a proof of
earnestness, and that you do not form your opinions
without undergoing labour of some kind." All geolo-
gists were, nevertheless, soon agreed in attaching the
highest value to these researches.

From this time forward his work was almost
exclusively zoological. The four monographs on the
Cirripedia, recent and fossil, occupied eight years—
from October, 1846, to October, 1854. The works on
the recent forms were published by the Kay Society
(1851 and 1854), and those on the fossil forms by the
Palseontographical Society (1851 and 1854). These
researches grew directly out of his observations on
the Beagle, but it is evident that they reached far
greater dimensions than he had at first intended.
Thus, at the very beginning of the work, he wrote
(October, 1846) to Hooker:—

" I am going to begin some papers on the lower marine
animals, which will last me some months, perhaps a year, and
then I shall begin looking over my ten-year-long accumulation
of notes on species and varieties, which, with writing, I
dare say will take me five years, and then, when published, I
dare say I shall stand infinitely low in the opinion of all sound
Naturalists— so this is my prospect for the future."

Darwin himself, at any rate towards the end of
his life, when he wrote his " Autobiography," doubted
"whether this work was worth the consumption of
so much time," although admitting that it was of
" considerable value " when he had " to discuss in

ON CIRRIPEDES. 37

the ' Origin of Species ' the principles of a natural
classification." Sir Joseph Hooker remembers that
Darwin at an earlier time "recognised three stages
in his career as a biologist : the mere collector at
Cambridge ; the collector and observer in the Beagle
and for some years afterwards ; and the trained
naturalist after, and only after, the Cirripede work"
(Letter to F. Darwin).

Professor Huxley considers that just as by Darwin's
practical experience of physical geography, geology,
etc., on the Beagle, "he knew of his own knowledge
the way in which the raw materials of these branches
of science are acquired, and was, therefore, a most
competent judge of the speculative strain they would
bear," so his Cirripede work fitted him for his sub-
sequent speculations upon the deepest biological
problems. " It was a piece of critical self-discipline,
the effect of which manifested itself in everything
your father wrote afterwards, and saved him from
endless errors of detail" (Letter to F. Darwin, "Life
and Letters"). The history of Darwin's career has
often been used as an argument against those who,
not having passed through a similar training as
regards systematic zoological work, have ventured
to concern themselves with the problems of evolution.
Professor Meldola has recently treated of this subject
in his interesting presidential address to the Entomo-
logical Society (1896). He says : —

" It used formerly to be asserted that he only is worthy of
attention who has done systematic, i.e. taxonomic, work. I

38 CHARLES DARWIN.

do not know whether this view is still entertained by entomo-
logists ; if so, I feel JDOund to express my dissent. It has been
pointed out that the great theorisers have all done such work
—that Darwin monographed the Cirripedia, and Huxley the
oceanic Hydrozoa, and it has been said that Wallace's and
Bates's contributions in this field have been their biological
salvation. I yield to nobody in my recognition of the value
and importance of taxonomic work, but the possibilities of
biological investigation have developed to such an extent since
Darwin's time that I do not think this position can any
longer be seriously maintained. It must be borne in mind
that the illustrious author of the 'Origin of Species' had
none of the opportunities for systematic training in biology
which any student can now avail himself of. To him the
monographing of the Cirripedia was, as Huxley states in a
communication to Francis Darwin, 'a piece of critical self-
discipline,' and there can be no reasonable doubt that this
value of systematic work will be generally conceded. That
this kind of work gives the sole right to speculate at the
present time is, however, quite another point."

Meldola then goes on to argue that the systematic
work of those who know nothing of the living state
of the species they are describing does not specially
fit them for theorising, and he concludes by quoting
the following passage from a letter recently received
from A. R Wallace : —

" I do not think species-describing is of any special use to
the philosophical generaliser, but I do think the collecting,
naming, and classifying some extensive group of organisms is
of great use, is, in fact, almost essential to any thorough grasp
of the whole subject of the evolution of species through
variation and natural selection. I had described nothing when
I wrote my papers on variation, etc. (except a few fishes and
palms from the Amazon), but I had collected and made out
species very largely and had seen to some extent how curiously
useful and protective their forms and colours often were, and
all this was of great use to me."

ON NAMING SPECIES. 39

Towards the end of this long period of hard
taxonomic labour, we know from Darwin's letters
that he was extremely tired of the work; but with
marvellous resolution — and in spite of the trouble
of his health, which was perhaps worse than at
any other time — he clung to and carried through
this stupendous task, although all the time attracted
^away from it by the weightier problems which he
could never thrust aside after they had once made
their claim upon him.

Darwin was evidently greatly disconcerted at the
task of making out those special difficulties which
man has added to the difficulties of Nature herself —
the disheartening tangle of nomenclature. He thought
that the custom of appending the name of the sys-
tematist after that of the species or genus he had
named was injurious to the interests of science —
inducing men to name quickly rather than describe
accurately. Some of his remarks on this subject
indicate the state of his mind. Thus he wrote to
Hooker, October 6th, 1848 :—

" I have lately been trying to get up an agitation . . .
against the practice of Naturalists appending for perpetuity
the name of the first describer to species. I look at this as a
direct premium to hasty work, to naming instead of describing.
A species ought to have a name so well known that the
addition of the author's name would be superfluous, and . .
empty vanity. . . . Botany, I fancy, has not suffered so
much as zoology from mere naming ; the characters, for-
tunately, are more obscure. . . . Why should Naturalists
append their own names to new species, when Mineralogists
and chemists do not do so to new substances ? "

40 CHARLES DARWIN.

And again he wrote to Hugh Strickland, January
29th, 1849 :-

" I have come to a fixed opinion that the plan of the first
describer's name, being appended for perpetuity to a species,
has been the greatest curse to Natural History. ... I feel sure
as long as species-mongers have their vanity tickled by seeing
their own names appended to a species, because they miserably
described it in two or three lines, we shall have the same vast
amount of bad work as at present, and which is enough to
dishearten any man who is willing to work out any branch
with care and time."

And in another letter (February 4th) to the same
correspondent : —

" In mineralogy I have myself found there is no rage to
merely name ; a person does not take up the subject without
he intends to work it out, as he knows that his only claim to
merit rests on his work being ably done, and has no relation
whatever to naming. ... I do not think more credit is due
to a man for defining a species, than to a carpenter for making
a box. But I am foolish and rabid against species-mongers, or
rather against their vanity ; it is useful and necessary work
which must be done ; but they act as if they had actually
made the species, and it was their own property."

A little later in the same year (1849) his health
seems to have determined him to give up the crusade,
for he writes to Hooker (April 29th) : —

" With health and vigour, I would not have shewn a white
feather, [and] with aid of half-a-dozen really good Naturalists,
I believe something might have been done against the
miserable and degrading passion of mere species naming."

Anyone whose researches have been among the
species of any much-worked and much-collected
zoological group will quite agree that synonymy is, as

DEATH OF HIS FATHER. 41

Darwin found it, heart-breaking work ; and although
there may be good reasons why the system of ap-
pending the describer's name must be retained, such
a protest as that raised in these letters cannot fail to
do good in drawing attention to an abuse which is
only too common, and which introduces unnecessary
difficulty and gratuitous confusion into the study of
Nature.

His father, Dr. Darwin, died November 13th,
1848, at the age of eighty- three, when he was so
much out of health that he was unable to attend the
funeral. In 1851 he lost his little daughter Annie,
who died at Malvern, April 23rd. A few days after
her death he wrote a most affecting account of her —
a composition of great beauty and pathos.

42

CHAPTER VI.

THE GROWTH OF THE "ORIGIN OF SPECIES " (1837-58).

IN dealing with this subject in his " Autobiography,"
Darwin tells us of his reflections whilst on the voyage
of the Beagle, and here mentions another observation
which deeply impressed him in addition to those which
he again repeats, on the relation between the living
and the dead in the same area and on the productions
of the Galapagos Archipelago — viz. " the manner in
which' closely allied animals replace one another in
proceeding southwards over the continent " (of South
America). On the theory of separate creation the
existence of such representative species received no
explanation, although it became perfectly intelligible
on the theory that a single species may be modified
into distinct, although nearly related, species in the
course of its range over a wide geographical area.
Here, too, the evidence is in favour of evolution simply,
and does not point to any cause of evolution.

He also implies that even at this time he regarded
the beautiful adaptations or contrivances of nature
by which organisms are fitted to their habits of life —
" for instance, a wood-pecker or a tree-frog to climb
trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes " — as
the most striking and important phenomena of the
organic world, and the one great difficulty in the path

COLLECTION OF NOTES. 43

of any naturalist who should attempt to supply a motive
force for evolution. And he regarded the previous
attempts at an explanation — the direct action of sur-
roundings and the will of the organism — as inadequate
because they could not account for such adaptations.

Therefore being convinced of evolution, but as yet
unprovided with a motive cause which in any way
satisfied him, he began in July, 1837, shortly after his
return home from the Beagle, to collect all facts which
bore upon the modifications which man has induce'd in
the animals and plants which he has subjugated, fol-
lowing, as he tells us, the example of Lyell in geology.
He goes on to say in his " Autobiography " : —

" I soon perceived that selection was the key-stone of man's
success in making useful races of animals and plants. But
how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of
nature remained for some time a mystery to me."

We see indications in the extracts from his note-
book at this period (viz. between July, 1837, and
February, 1838), and before he had arrived at the
conception oOfetural Selection, that hejiad the ictea
of " laws of change " affecting species to some extent
like thlTlaws of change which compel the individuals
of every species towork out their^own^development,
the extinction of the one corresponding in a measure
to the death of the other. Thus he says, " It is a won-
derful fact, horse, elephant, and mastodon dying out
about the same time in such different quarters. Will
Mr. Lyell say that some [same ?] circumstance killed
it over a tract from Spain to South America ?

44 CHARLES DARWIN.

Never." We know that a few months later he would
have himself accepted the view he imputes to Lyell, and
would have regarded the extinction as due to some cir-
cumstance affecting the competition for food or some
other relationship with the organic life of the same
district. It is probable that the above quotation from
his Diary was written in connection with the conclusion
of Chapter IX. of the first edition of the " Journal of
the Voyage" (pp. 211, 212); for the latter is a fuller
exposition of the same argument.*

" One is tempted to believe," he says, " in such simple rela-
tions, as variation of climate and food, or introduction of
enemies, or the increased numbers of other species, as the cause
of the succession of races. But it may be asked whether it is
probable that [" than" is an evident misprint in the original] any
such cause should have been in action during the same epoch
over the whole northern hemisphere, so as to destroy the
Elephas primigenius on the shores of Spain, on the plains of
Siberia, and in Northern America. . . . These cases of
extinction forcibly recall the idea (I do not wish to draw any
close analogy) of certain fruit-trees, which, it has been asserted,
though grafted on young stems, planted in varied situations,
and fertilized by the richest manures, yet at one period have
all withered away and perished. A fixed and determined length
of life has in such cases been given to thousands and thousands
of buds (or individual germs), although produced in long
succession."

He then concludes that the animals of one species,
although " each individual appears nearly independent
of its kind," may be bound together by common laws.

* " We are told in the " Life and Letters " that the last proof of
the "Journal" was finished in 1837. The Diary, as stated above,
was written between July, 1837, and February, 1838.

EARLY VIEWS. 45

He ends by arguing that the adaptations of animals
confined to certain areas cannot be related to the
peculiarities of climate or country, because other
animals introduced by man are often so much more
successful than the aborigines. As to the causes of
extinction, " all that at present can be said with cer-
tainty is that, as with the individual, so with the
species, the hour of life has run its course, and is
spent."

At this time he had the conception — as we see in
the succeeding extracts from his Diary — of species
being so constituted that they must give rise to other
species ; or, if not, that they must die out, just as an
individual dies unrepresented if it has no offspring;
that change — and evidently change in some fixed
direction — or extinction, is inevitable in the history
of a species after a certain period of time. With this
view, which presented much resemblance to that of
the author of the "Vestiges," and which seemed upper-
most in his mind at this time, there are traces of others.
Thus in one extract the '-'wish of parents " was thought
of as a very doubtful explanation of adaptation, while
in another we meet a tolerably clear indication of
natural selection, a variety which is not well adapted
being doomed to extinction, while a favourable one
is perpetuated, the death of a species being regarded
as "a consequence ... of non-adaptation of cir-
cumstances."

It seems certain that for fifteen months after
July, 1837, he was keenly considering the various

46 CHARLES DARWIN.

causes of evolution which were suggested to him by
the facts of nature, and that some general idea of
natural selection presented itself to him at times,
although without any of the force and importance
it assumed in his mind at a later time.

In October, 1838, he read " Mai thus on Popula-
tion," and as he says : —

" Being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for
existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued
observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once
struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations
would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be
destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new
species. Here then I had a theory by which to work."

In June, 1842, he wrote a brief account of the theory,
occupying thirty-five pages. In Lyell's and Hooker's
introduction to the joint paper by Darwin and
Wallace in the Linnean Society's Journal (1858)* it
is stated that the first sketch was made in 1839, but
Francis Darwin shows (" Life and Letters," 1887,
Vol. II. £p. 11, 12) that in all probability this is an
error — a note of Darwin's referring to the first com-
plete grasp of the theory after reading Malthus, being
mistaken for a reference to the first written account.

In 1844 the sketch was enlarged to a written
essay occupying 231 pages folio — "a surprisingly
complete presentation of the argument afterwards
familiar to us in the ' Origin of Species ' " published
fifteen years later. Professor Huxley, after reading
this essay, observed that " much more weight is
attached to the influence of external conditions in

SKETCH OF THE "ORIGIN." 47

producing variation, and to the inheritance of acquired
habits than in the ' Origin/ " while Professor Newton
pointed out that the remarks on the migration of
birds anticipate the views of later writers.*

The explanation of divergence of species during
modification (divergence of character) had not then
occurred to him, and he tells us in the " Auto-
biography : —

" I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my
carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me ; and
this was long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I
believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and
increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly
diversified places in the economy of nature."

A good example of this tendency is seen in
the relations of three- great vertebrate classes —
mammals, birds, and fishes — to the environments
for which they are respectively fitted: earth, air,
and water. Competition is most severe between
forms most nearly alike, and hence some measure
of relief from competition is afforded when certain
members of each of these classes enter the domain
of one of the others. Hence, we observe that although
mammals as a whole are terrestrial, a small minority
are aerial and aquatic ; although birds are aerial, a
minority are terrestrial and aquatic ; although fishes
are aquatic, a minority tend to be, at any rate largely,
terrestrial and aerial.

* Professor H. F. Os"born has rightly urged that this essay
should be published (" From the Greeks to Darwin," 1894,
p. 235).

48 CHARLES DARWIN.

Huxley considered it " curious that so much
importance shotild be attached to this supplementary
idea. It seems obvious that the theory of the origin
of species by natural selection necessarily involves the
divergence of the forms selected" ("Obituary," 1888,
reprinted in " Darwiniana," 1893; see pp. 280, 281).
But Darwin showed that divergence might be a great
advantage in itself, and would then be directly (and
not merely incidentally and indirectly) encouraged
and increased by natural selection.

As soon as the 1844 sketch was finished, Darwin
wrote a letter (July 5th) as his " solemn and last
request " that his wife would, in the case of his
death, devote £400, or if necessary £500, in publishing
it, and would take trouble in promoting it. He suggests
Lyell as the best editor, then Edward Forbes, then
Henslow ("quite the best in many respects"), then
Hooker (" would be very good "), then Strickland.
After Strickland he had thought of Owen as "very
good," but added, " I presume he would not under-
take such a work." If no editor could be obtained,
he requested that the essay should be published as
it was — stating that it was not intended for publica-
tion in its present form. In August, 1854, he wrote
on the back of the letter : " Hooker by far best man
to edit my Species volume."

All this shows how certain he felt that he
was on firm ground, and that his theory of
natural selection was of vast importance to science.
This same strong conviction appears clearly in the

RESOLVE TO PUBLISH. 49

first edition of the " Origin/' and is undoubtedly one
of the secrets of its power to move the minds of men.
Although the author is above all others fair-minded ;
although he is most keen to discover and to bring
forward all opposing evidence, and to criticise most
minutely everything favourable ; nevertheless, looking
at the evidence as a whole, he has no doubt as to
its bearing, and feels, and shows that he feels, a
magnificent confidence in the truth and the im-
portance of his theory.

50

CHAPTER VII.

GROWTH OF THE " ORIGIN " (continued) - - CORRE-
SPONDENCE WITH FRIENDS.

THE great periods of Darwin's scientific career are
marked by intimate friendships, which must be
taken into account in attempting to trace his mental
development. Henslow was his intimate friend at
Cambridge and during the voyage of the Beagle.
The influence of Lyell, through his writings, was of
the utmost importance during the voyage, and was
deepened by the close personal contact which took
place on Darwin's return. Sir Joseph Hooker was
his most intimate friend during the growth of the
" Origin of Species."

Although Hooker met Darwin in 1839, their
friendship did not begin until four years later, when
the former returned from the Antarctic Expedition.
On January llth, 1844, Darwin wrote admitting his
conclusions on the question of evolution : — " At last
gleams of light have come," he says, "and I am
almost convinced (quite contrary to the opinion I
started with) that species are not (it is like con-
fessing a murder) immutable" ("Life and Letters,"
Vol. II. p. 23).

From this point onwards his letters, especially to

INQUIRIES AND EXPERIMENTS. 51

Hooker, indicate the course he was following and the
various problems he was considering as they arose.
Thus we find that he had finished reading Wollaston's
" Insecta Maderensia" in 1855 (writing March 7th),
and had been struck with the very large proportion
of wingless beetles, and had interpreted the ob-
servation, viz. " that powers of flight would be
injurious to insects inhabiting a confined locality,
and expose them to be blown to the sea." It is of
great interest thus to witness the origin of a theory
which has since been universally accepted, and
has received confirmation from many parts of the
world.

On April llth of the same year he is experiment-
ing on the powers of resistance to immersion in salt
water possessed by seeds, and he writes an account of
it to Hooker. The object of these experiments was
to throw light on the means by which plants have
been transported to islands.

In the same year began his correspondence with
Asa Gray, who soon became one of his warmest
friends. He had numerous questions to ask about
the geographical range of plants, and in 1857 he
wrote explaining in some detail the views at which
he had arrived as to the causes of evolution.

My friend Kowland H. Wedgwood, a nephew of
Darwin, has given me the following interesting
letter to his father, which was written, he believes,
probably before 1855. By kind permission, it isTiere
published for the first time. The letter is of great

52 CHARLES DARWIN.

interest, as throwing light upon his work, and also
because of this early reference to Huxley : — •

" Down, Sept. 5.

"MY DEAR HARRY, — I am very much obliged for the
Columbine seed and for your note which made us laugh
heartily.

" I had no idea what trouble the counting must have been,
I had not the least conception that there would have been so
many pods. I am very much interested on this point, and
therefore to make assurance sure, I repeat your figures viz.
560 and 742 pods on two plants and 7200 on another. Does
the latter number really mean pods and not seeds? Upon
my life I am sorry to give so much trouble, but I should be
VERY MUCH obliged for a few average size pods, put up
separately that I may count the seeds in each pod : for
though I counted the seeds in the pods sent before, I hardly
dare trust them without counting more. Moreover I sadly
want more seed itself for one of my experiments.

" The young cabbages are coming up already. Thank you
much about the asparagus seeds ; as it is so rare a plant, you
are my only chance.

"We hare been grieved to hear about poor Anne and
Tom.—" Your affect*? screw " C. DARWIN.

" Have you been acquainted with Mr. Huxley ; I think
you would find him a pleasant acquaintance. He is a very
clever man."

Mr. Francis Darwin believes that the asparagus
and cabbage seeds were for the experiments to deter-
mine the time during which immersion in salt water
could be endured. The object of such experiments
was to throw light on the means by which plants are
distributed over the earth's surface. He also informs
me that the use of the word " screw " is unique and
incomprehensible.

Darwin tells us in the " Autobiography " that

ON THE "ATLANTIS" THEORY. 53

" early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my
views pretty fully, and I began at once to do so on a
scale three or four times as extensive as that which
was afterwards followed in my ' Origin of Species.' "
This work he began on May 14th, and, after working
steadily until June, 1858, had written about half the
book, in ten chapters, when he received the celebrated
letter from Wallace, which altered everything.

At this period we get interesting evidence of his
extraordinary insight in the strong protests he makes
against the Atlantis hypothesis of Edward Forbes,
and the other vast continental extensions which
naturalists did not hesitate to make in order to
explain the existence of species common to countries
separated by wide tracts of the ocean. These lost
continents were as generally accepted as they were
freely proposed. And yet we find that, even then,
one thinker far ahead of his time saw clearly enough
— as the Challenger Expedition twenty years later
proved beyond all doubt — that the geological evi-
dence is against such extension, and that the means
of distribution possessed by animals are such as to
render the supposition unnecessary.

In June, 1856, he writes to Lyell : " My blood gets
hot with passion and turns cold alternately at the
geological strides, which many of your disciples are
taking"; and after mentioning the extension of
continents proposed by many leading naturalists, he
says : " If you do not stop this, if there be a lower
region for the punishment of geologists, I believe, my

54 CHARLES DARWIN.

great master, you will go there. Why, your disciples
in a slow and creeping manner beat all the old
Catastrophists who ever lived ! You will live to be
the great chief of the Catastrophists." Lyell wrote
disagreeing on the subject of continental extension ;
and hence, on June 25th, 1856, Darwin replied in a
long letter, giving in detail his reasons for rejecting
the hypothesis. He argued (1) that the supposed ex-
tension of continents and fusion of islands would be
vast changes, giving the earth a new aspect, but that
recent and tertiary molluscs, etc., are distinct on
opposite sides of the existing continents; so that,
although he did not doubt great changes of level
in parts of continents, he concluded that "funda-
mentally they stood as barriers to the sea where
they now stand " ever since the appearance of living
species; (2) that if a continent were nearly sub-
merged, the last remaining peaks would by no means
always be volcanic, as are, almost without exception,
the oceanic islands; (3) that the amount of subsi-
dence which took place in continental areas during
the Silurian and Carboniferous periods — viz. during
one tolerably uniform set of beings — would not be
enough to account for the depth of the ocean over
some parts of the site of the supposed submerged
continents ; (4) that the supposed extensions are
not consistent with the absence of many groups of
animals — e.g. mammals, frogs, etc. — from islands.

These arguments did not convince Lyell ; and they
have only received an almost universal acceptance

EARLY CORRESPONDENCE. 55

after the confirmatory evidence afforded by the
voyage of the Challenger. Dredgings over many
parts of the ocean showed that all the continental
deposits are collected on a fringing shelf not more
than 200 miles wide, and that beyond this in the
ocean bed proper an entirely different kind of deposit
is accumulating, composed of the shells, bones, and
teeth of swimming or floating organisms, or the
products of their decomposition, of volcanic and
cosmic dust, and the products — e.g. manganese di-
oxide— of the decomposition of these and of floating
pumice. Hence, the depths of the ocean afford no
indications of a lost continental area, but are covered
by a peculiar deposit unknown among the rocks of
continents which were formed in comparatively
shallow water round and not far from coasts, or in
land-locked or nearly land-locked seas like the
Mediterranean.

On July 20th, 1856, he wrote to Asa Gray, giving
some account of his views, and stating his belief in
evolution, but only hinting at natural selection.

About this time we meet with evidence of the
great difficulty with which Darwin's ideas were
thoroughly understood, even by his intimate friends,
to whom he often wrote on the subject. Later on,
when the "Origin of Species" was published, al-
though the arguments in favour of natural selection
were given in considerable detail, many years passed
before the theory itself was understood by the
great body of naturalists. This particular ^ case ot

56 CHARLES DARWIN.

misunderstanding is of such great interest that it
is desirable to consider it in detail.

In the origin of new species by natural selection,
jjie stress of competition determines the survival
of favourable individual variations, and these, when
by the continued operation of the process they have
become constant, are added to those pre-existing
characters^ of the species which are inherited from^
a remote past, and are witnesses of the operation of
naturaTs'eiection from age to age under ever- changing
conditions of competition and variation.^ It follows,
therefore, that the origin of a species can only take
place once; for it is infinitely improbable that the
same variation would be independently submitted
under the same conditions of competition, and added
to the mass of inherited characters independently
gained in two distinct lines by natural selection
acting in the same manner upon the same variations
in the same order through all ages. Not only is
it inconceivable that the same species could arise by
natural selection from distinct lines of ancestry, but
it is extremely improbable that the same species
could arise independently in more than one centre
among the individuals of a changing species ; for in
this case, too, it is most unlikely that the same
conditions of competition would co-exist with the
same favourable variations in the areas inhabited
by independent colonies of the same species.

Under other theories of evolution — direct action
of environment, supposed inherited effects of use and

EARLY CRITICISM. 57

disuse, etc. — an independent origin, even from quite
distinct lines, would be probable ; and we find,
accordingly, that those who would advance such
theories believe in what is called the " polyphyletic "
origin of species (e.g. the horse), and in the principle
of "convergence" carried far enough to produce the
same complex character (e.g. vertebrate teeth) twice
over without an}^ genetic connection between the
forms in which the character appears.

Under natural selection, however, such a result
would be infinitely improbable, and hence this theory
strongly supports, and indeed explains, the theory
of " specific centres," viz. that each species has arisen
in one area only, and has spread from that into the
other areas over which it now occurs. This view was
strongly held by Lyell and Hooker after an ex-
haustive study of the facts then known as to the
geographical distribution of plants and animals ; and
yet both of these distinguished naturalists seem to
have feared that Darwin, in advancing a theory
which was entirely consistent with their convictions
and utterly inconsistent with any other views upon
the same subject, was in some way undermining
the conclusions at which they had arrived.

Thus Lyell wrote (July 25th, 1856) to Hooker :—

" I fear much that if Darwin argues that species are
phantoms, he will also have to admit that single centres of
dispersion are phantoms also, and that would deprive me of
much of the value which I ascribe to the present provinces
of animals and plants, as illustrating modern and tertiary
changes in physical geography."

58 CHARLES DARWIN.

And on August 5th of the same year Darwin replied
to Hooker, who 4iad apparently argued that the origin
of species by direct action of climate, etc., would mean
independent and multiple specific centres : —

" I see from your remarks that you do not understand my
notions (whether or no worth anything) about modification ;
I attribute very little to the direct action of climate, etc. I
suppose, in regard to specific centres, we are at cross purposes ;
I should call the kitchen garden in which the red cabbage
was produced, or the farm in which Bakewell made the
Shorthorn cattle, the specific centre of these species ! And
surely this is centralisation enough ! "

As I have argued above, Darwin was all the time
affording the strongest support to the theory of
specific centres : support which was entirely wanting
in the theory of separate creation, in which the origin
of each species is wrapped in mystery, so that we can
form no opinion as to whether it took place at one
centre or at many.

At this time, when the views set forth in the
" Origin " were gaining shape and expression, we
cannot estimate too highly the value of the corre-
spondence with Hooker. In after years, when the
"Origin" had to stand the fire of adverse criticism,
and at first of very general disapproval, it was of
inestimable advantage that every idea contained in
it should have been minutely discussed beforehand
with one who was more critical and more learned
than the greatest of those who afterwards objected.
Darwin tells us in his " Autobiography " : —

VALUE OF THE DISCUSSION. 59

" I think that I can say with truth that in after years,
though I cared in the highest degree for the approbation of
such men as Lyell and Hooker, who were my friends, I did
not care much about the general public."

But, although Darwin cared nothing for it, it is
nevertheless true that the approbation of minds such
as these was a sure indication of the general ap-
probation of the intellect of the country, and of the
world, which was to follow as soon as the new ideas
were absorbed.

And the value which Darwin himself placed on
these discussions appears again and again in his
letters. To take " a single example, he writes to
Hooker November 23rd, 1856 :—

" I fear I shall weary you with letters, but do not answer
this, for in truth and without flattery, I so value your letters,
that after a heavy batch, as of late, I feel that I have been
extravagant and have drawn too much money, and shall
therefore have to stint myself on another occasion."

60

CHAPTER VIII.

DARWIN AND WALLACE (1858).

THE history of Darwin's friendship with Alfred
Russel Wallace is of quite unique interest, being
brought about by the fact that both naturalists saw
in evolution and its causes the great questions of the
immediate future, and by the agreement in the
interpretations which they independently offered.
Wallace was collecting and observing in the Malay
Archipelago, and wrote to Darwin as the one man
most likely to sympathise with and understand his
views and to offer valuable criticism.

In the " Annals and Magazine of Natural History "
for 1855, Wallace published a paper " On the Law
that has Regulated the Introduction of New
Species," and in this and a letter written from the
Malay Archipelago Darwin recognised the similarity
of their views, although the completeness of this
agreement was to be brought before him with
startling force a year after his sympathetic reply,
written May 1st, 1857. He then wrote :—

" By your letter and even still more by your paper in the
Annals, a year or more ago, I can plainly see that we have
thought much alike and to a certain extent have come to
similar conclusions. In regard to the Paper in the Annals,
I agree to the truth of • almost every word of your paper ; and
I dare say that you will agree with me that it is very rare to

WALLACE'S ESSAY. 61

find oneself agreeing pretty closely with any theoretical paper ;
for it is lamentable how each man draws his own different
conclusions from the very same facts."

On December 22nd he replied to another letter
from Wallace, again expressing agreement with all
his conclusions except that upon the supposed con-
tinental extension to oceanic islands, on which,
alluding to his previous discussion, he says : —

" You will be glad to hear that neither Lyell nor Hooker
thought much of my arguments. Nevertheless, for once in my
life, I dare withstand the almost preternatural sagacity of
Lyell."

And he concludes with the wish —

"May all your theories succeed, except that on Oceanic
Islands, on which subject I will do battle to the death."

He also said, as regards Wallace's conclusions : " I
believe I go much further than you ; but it is too
long a subject to enter on my speculative notions."

Finally, on June 18th, 1858, Darwin received from
Wallace a manuscript essay bearing the title " On the
Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the
Original Type." Upon this essay he wanted Darwin's
opinion, and asked him, if he thought well of it, to
forward it to Lyell. Darwin was startled to find in
the essay a complete account of his own views. That
very day he wrote to Lyell, enclosing the essay. In
the letter he said : —

"Your words have come true with a vengeance— that I
should be forestalled. You said this, when I explained to you
here very briefly my views of ' Natural Selection ' depending

62 CHARLES DARWIN.

on the struggle for existence. I never saw a more striking
coincidence ; if ^allace had my MS. sketch written out in
1842, he could not have made a better short abstract ! Even
his terms now stand as heads of my chapters."

A few days later (June 25th) lie again wrote to
Lyell, saying —

" I should be extremely glad now to publish a sketch of my
general views in about a dozen pages or so ; but I cannot
persuade myself that I can do so honourably. Wallace says
nothing about publication, and I enclose his letter. But as
I had not intended to publish any sketch, can I do so
honourably, because Wallace has sent me an outline of his
doctrine ? I would far rather burn my whole book, than that
he or any other man should think that I had behaved in a
paltry spirit."

He also asked Lyell to send the letter on to
Hooker, " for then I shall have the opinion of my two
best and kindest friends." He was so much dis-
tressed at the idea of being unfair to Wallace that he
wrote again the next day to put the case against
himself in an even stronger light. This must have
been one of the most trying times in Darwin's life,
for, in addition to the cause of trouble and perplexity
described above, one of his children died of scarlet
fever, and there was the gravest fear lest the others
should be attacked.

Thus appealed to, Lyell and Hooker took an
extremely wise and fair course. They asked Darwin
for an abstract of his work, and, accepting the whole
responsibility, communicated it and Wallace's essay
in a joint paper to the Linnean Society, giving an
account of the circumstances of the case in a preface,

BOTH ESSAYS PUBLISHED. 63

which took the form of a letter to the Secretary of
the Society. In this letter they introduced to the
Society "the results of the investigations of the
indefatigable naturalists, Mr. Charles Darwin and
Mr. Alfred Wallace."

" These gentlemen having, independently and unknown to
one another, conceived the same very ingenious theory to
account for the appearance and perpetuation of varieties and
of specific forms on our planet, may both fairly claim the
merit of being original thinkers in this important line of
enquiry; but neither of them having published his views,
though Mr. Darwin has for many years past been repeatedly
urged by us to do so, and both authors having now unre-
servedly placed their papers in our hands, we think it would
best promote the interests of science that a selection from
them should be laid before the Linnean Society."

After giving a list of these selections, they say of
Wallace's essay —

" This was written at Ternate * in February, 1858, for the
perusal of his friend and correspondent Mr. Darwin, and sent
to him with the expressed wish that it should be forwarded to
Sir Charles Lyell, if Mr. Darwin thought it sufficiently novel
and interesting. So highly did Mr. Darwin appreciate the
value of the views therein set forth, that he proposed, in a
letter to Sir Charles Lyell, to obtain Mr. Wallace's consent to
allow the Essay to be published as soon as possible. Of this
step we highly approved, provided Mr. Darwin did not with-
hold from the public, as he was strongly inclined to do (in
favour of Mr. Wallace), the memoir which he had himself
written on the same subject, and which, as before stated, one
of us had perused in 1844, and the contents of which we had

* My friend Mr. J. J. Walker, E.N., tells me that the house in
which Wallace lived in Ternate, and in which the essay was written,
is still pointed out by the natives as one of the features of the place.
It is, unfortunately, much dilapidated.

64 CHARLES DARWIN.

both of us been privy to for many years. On representing
this to Mr. Darwin, he gave us permission to make what use
we thought proper of his memoir, &c. ; and in adopting our
present course, of presenting it to the Linnean Society, we
have explained to him that we are not solely considering the
relative claims to priority of himself and his friend, but the
interests of science generally ; for we feel it to be desirable
that views founded on a wide deduction from facts, and
matured by years of reflection, should constitute at once a
goal from which others may start, and that, while the scientific
world is waiting for the appearance of Mr. .Darwin's complete
work, some of the leading results of his labours, as well as
those of his able correspondent, should together be laid before
the public."

The title of the joint paper was " On the Tendency
of Species to form Varieties ; and on the Perpetuation
of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selec-
tion." It was read July 1st, 1858.

65

CHAPTER IX.

DARWIN'S SECTION OF THE JOINT MEMOIR READ
BEFORE THE LINNEAN SOCIETY JULY 1, 1858.

THE first section of Darwin's communication consisted
of extracts from the Second Chapter of the First
Part of his manuscript essay of 1844. The Part was
entitled "The Variation of Organic Beings under
Domestication, and in their Natural State," and the
Second Chapter was headed "On the Variation of
Organic Beings ir. a State of Nature ; on the Natural
Means of Selection ; on the Comparison of Domestic
Races and True Species." The extracts first deal
with the tendency towards rapid multiplication and
the consequent struggle for life. The average constancy
of the numbers of individuals is traced to the average
constancy of the amount of food, "whereas the
increase of all organisms tends to be geometrical."
Practical illustrations are given in the enormous
increase of the mice in La Plata during the drought
which killed millions of cattle, and in the well-known
and rapid increase of the animals and plants intro-
duced by man into a new and favourable country.

The checks which operate when the country is
stocked and the species reaches its average are most
difficult to detect, but none the less certain. If any
check is lightened in the case of any organism it will

66 CHARLES DARWIN.

at once tend to increase. " Nature may be compared
to a surface on \fchich rest ten thousand sharp wedges
touching each other and driven inward by incessant
blows." Darwin meant by this image to express
that just as any single wedge would instantly rise
above the rest when the blows on it were in any
way lessened as compared with those on the other
wedges, so it would be with the proportionate number
of any species when the checks to which it is sub-
jected are in any way relaxed.

If the external conditions alter, and the changes
continue progressing, the inhabitants will be less well
adapted than formerly. The changed conditions
would act on the reproductive system and render the
organisation plastic. Now, can it be doubted, from
the struggle each individual has to obtain subsistence,
that any minute variation in structure, habits, or
instincts adapting that individual better to the new
conditions would tell upon its vigour and health ?
" Yearly more are bred than can survive ; the smallest
grain in the balance, in the long run, must tell on
which death shall fall, and which shall survive." If
this went on for a thousand generations who will deny
its effect " when we remember what, in a few years,
Bakewell effected in cattle, and Western in sheep, by
this identical principle of selection " ?

He gives an imaginary example of a canine animal
preying on rabbits and hares. If the rabbits, con-
stituting its chief food, gradually became rarer,
and the hares more plentiful, the animal would be

FIRST PUBLISHED ESSAY. 67

driven to try and catch more hares, and hence would
be selected in the direction of speed and sharp eye-
sight. " I can see no more reason to doubt that these
cases in a thousand generations would produce a
marked effect, and adapt the form of the fox or dog
to the catching of hares instead of rabbits, than that
greyhounds can be improved by selection and careful
breeding." So also with plants having seeds with
rather more down, leading to wider dissemination.
Darwin here added this note : " I can see no more
difficulty in this, than in the planter improving his
varieties of the cotton plant. C. D. 1858." .

Then follows a brief sketch of sexual selection and
a comparison with natural selection, and the con-
clusion is reached — " this kind of selection, however,
is less vigorous than the other ; it does not require
the death of the less successful, but gives to them
fewer descendants. The struggle falls, moreover, at a
time of year when food is generally abundant, and
perhaps the effect chiefly produced would be the
modification of the secondary sexual characters,
which are not related to the power of obtaining food,
or to defence from enemies, but to fighting with or
rivalling other males."

The second section was entitled " Abstract of a
Letter from C. Darwin, Esq., to Professor Asa Gray,
Boston, U.S., dated Down, September 5th, 1857." To
this letter Darwin attached great importance as a
convenient and brief account of the essentials of his
theory, written and sent to Asa Gray many months

68 CHARLES DARWIN.

before he received Wallace's essay. A tolerably full
abstract of the- letter, which is itself a very brief
abstract, is therefore printed below. The epitome
here given is taken from the letter itself, and is in
certain respects more full than that published in the
Linnean Journal.

In the introductory parts Darwin explained that
" the facts which kept me longest scientifically
orthodox are those of adaptation — the pollen-masses
in asclepias — the mistletoe, with its pollen carried by
insects, and seed by birds — -the woodpecker, with its
feet and tail, beak and tongue, to climb the tree and
secure insects. To talk of climate or Lamarckian
habit producing such adaptations to other organic
beings is futile. This difficulty I believe I have
surmounted." Having then stated that the reasons
which induced him to accept evolution were " general
facts in the affinities, embryology, rudimentary organs,
geological history, and geographical distribution of
organic beings," he proceeds to give a brief account
of his " notions on the means by which Nature
makes her species." The following is an abstract of
the account he gives: —

1. The success with which selection has been applied by
man in making his breeds of domestic animals and plants :
and this even in ancient times when the selection was uncon-
scious, viz. when breeding was not thought of, but the most
useful animals and plants were kept and the others destroyed.
"Selection acts only by the accumulation of very slight or
greater variations," and man in thus accumulating " may be
said to make the wool of one sheep good for carpets, and
another for cloth, &c."

SUMMARY OF THE ESSAY. 69

II. Slight variations of all parts of the organism occur in
nature, and if a being could select with reference to the whole
structure, what changes might he not effect in the almost
unlimited time of which geology assures us.

III. Animals increase so fast that, but for extermination,
the earth would not hold the progeny of even the slowest
breeding animal. Only a fewr in each generation can live ; hence
the struggle for life, which has never yet been sufficiently
appreciated. " What a trifling difference must often determine
which shall survive and which perish ! " Thus is supplied the
" unerring power " of " Natural Selection . . . which selects
exclusively for the good of each organic being."

IV. If a country were changing the altered conditions
would tend to cause variation, " not but what I believe most
beings vary at all times enough for selection to act on."
Extermination would expose the remainder to "the mutual
action of a different set of inhabitants, which I believe to be
more important to the life of each being than mere climate."
In the infinite complexity of the struggle for life " I cannot
doubt that during millions of generations individuals of a
species will be born with some slight variation profitable to
some part of its economy ; such will have a better chance of
surviving and propagating this variation, which again will
be slowly increased by the accumulative action of natural
selection ; and the variety thus formed will either coexist with,
or more commonly will exterminate its parent form." Thus
complex adaptations like those of woodpecker or mistletoe may
be produced.

V. Numerous difficulties can be answered satisfactorily
in time. The supposed changes are only very gradual, and very
slow, " only a few undergoing change at any one time." The
imperfection of the geological record accounts for deficient
direct evidence of change.

VI. Divergence during evolution will be an advantage.
"The same spot will support more life if occupied by very
diverse forms." Hence during the increase of species into its
offspring — varieties, or sub-species, or true species, the latter
" will try (only few will succeed) to seize on as many and as
diverse places in the economy of nature as possible," and so

70 CHARLES DARWIN.

will tend to " exterminate its less well-fitted parent." This
explains classification, in which the organic beings " always
seem to branch anTl sub-branch like a tree from a common
trunk ; the flourishing twigs destroying the less vigorous — the
dead and lost branches rudely representing extinct genera
and families."

In a postscript he says : —

" This little abstract touches only the accumulative power
of natural selection, which I look at as by far the most im-
portant element in the production of new forms. The laws
governing the incipient or primordial variation (unimportant
except as the groundwork for selection to act on, in which
respect it is all important), I shall discuss under several heads,
but I can come, as you may well believe, only to very partial
and imperfect conclusions."

It is, I think, of especial interest to find Darwin
at this early period arguing in a most convincing
manner for the creative power of natural selection.
The selective power becomes, by accumulation, of •
such paramount importance in the process, as com-
pared with the variations, that, although these latter
are absolutely essential, man may be said to make
his domestic breeds and Nature her species. The
man who argued thus had been through and had
left behind the difficulty that, even now, is often
raised — that "before anything can be selected it
must be," and therefore that selection is of small
account as compared with variation.

71

CHAPTER X.

WALLACE'S SECTION OF THE JOINT MEMOIR READ
BEFORE THE LINNEAN SOCIETY JULY 1, 1858.

THE communication by Alfred Russel Wallace was
entitled " On the Tendency of Varieties to depart
indefinitely from the Original Type." An abstract
of it is given below.

Varieties produced in domesticity are more or
less unstable, and often tend to return to the parent
form. This is usually thought to be true for all
varieties, and to be a strong argument for the original
and permanent distinctness of species.

On the other hand, races forming " permanent
or true varieties" are well known, and there are
generally no means of determining which is the
variety and which the original species. The hypo-
thesis of a "permanent invariability of species" is
satisfied by supposing that, while such varieties
cannot diverge from the species beyond a certain
fixed limit, they may return to it.

This argument is founded on the assumption
that varieties in nature are in all respects identical
with those of domestic animals. The object of the
paper is to show that this is false, and "that there
is a general principle in nature which will cause

72 CHARLES DARWIN.

many varieties to survive the parent species and
to give rise to successive variations departing further
and further from the original type." The same
principle explains the tendency of domestic animals
to return to the parent form.

" The life of wild animals is a struggle for
existence." To procure food and escape enemies
are the primary conditions of existence, and deter-
mine abundance and rarity, frequently seen in
closely allied species.

" Large animals cannot be so abundant as small
ones ; the carnivora must be less numerous than the
herbivora," eagles and lions than pigeons and ante-
lopes. Fecundity has little or nothing to do with
this. The least prolific animals would increase
rapidly if unchecked. But wild animals do not
increase beyond their average ; hence there must
be an immense amount of destruction. The abun-
dance of species in individuals bears no relation
whatever to their fertility. Thus the excessively
abundant passenger pigeon of the United States
lays only one or two eggs. Its abundance is ex-
plained by the widespread supply of food rendered
available by its powers of flight. The food-supply
"is almost the sole condition requisite for ensuring
the rapid increase of a given species." This explains
why the sparrow is more abundant than the red-
breast, why aquatic species of birds are specially
numerous in individuals, why the wild cat is rarer
than the rabbit. " So long as a country remains

WALLACE'S ESSAY. 73

physically unchanged, the numbers of its animal
population cannot materially increase." If one species
does so, others must diminish. In the immense
amount of destruction the weakest must die, " while
those that prolong their existence can only be the
most perfect in health and vigour — those who are
best able to obtain food regularly and to avoid their
numerous enemies. It is, as we commenced by re-
marking, 'a struggle for existence,' in which the
weakest and least perfectly organised must always
succumb."

This tendency must apply to species as well as
individuals, the best adapted becoming abundant, the
others scarce or even extinct. If we knew the whole
of the conditions and powers of a species " we might
be able even to calculate the proportionate abundance
of individuals, which is the necessary result."

Hence, first, the animal population of a country
is generally stationary (due to food and other
checks); second, comparative abundance or scarcity
of individuals is entirely due to organisation and
resulting habits, the varying measure of success in
the struggle being balanced by a varying population
in a given area.

Variations from type must nearly always affect
habits or capacities. Even changes of colour may
promote concealment, while changes in the limbs
or any external organs would affect the mode of
procuring food, etc. "An antelope with shorter or
weaker legs must necessarily suffer more from the

74 CHARLES DARWIN.

attacks of the feline carnivora " ; the passenger pigeon
with less powerful wings could not always procure
sufficient food. Hence species thus modified would
gradually diminish ; but, on the other hand, if
modified in the direction of increased powers, would
become more numerous. Varieties will fall under
these two classes — those which will never rival, and
those which will eventually outnumber, the parent
species. If, then, some alteration in conditions
occurred making existence more difficult to a certain
species, first the less favourable variety would suffer
and become extinct, then the parent species, while
the superior variety would alone remain, " and on a
return to favourable circumstances would rapidly
increase in numbers and occupy the place of the
extinct species and variety."

The superior variety would thus replace the
species, to which it could not return, for the latter
could never compete with the former. Hence a
tendency to revert would be checked. But the
superior variety, when established, would in time give
rise to new varieties, some of Avhich would become
predominant. Hence progression and continued
divergence would follow, but not invariably, for the
criteria of success or failure would vary, and would
sometimes render a race which was under other
conditions the most favoured now the least so.
Variations without any effect on the life-preserving
powers might also occur. But it is contended that
certain varieties must, on the average, tend to persist

WALLACE'S ESSAY. 75

longer than the parent species, while the scale on
which nature works is so vast that an average
tendency must in the end attain its full result.

Comparing domestic with wild animals, the very
existence of the latter depends upon their senses and
physical powers. Not so with the former, which are
defended and fed by man.

Any favourable variety of a domestic animal is
utterly useless to itself; while any increase of the
powers and faculties of wild animals is immediately
available, creating, as it were, a new and superior
animal.

Again, with domestic animals all variations have
an equal chance, and those which would be extremely
injurious in a wild state are, under the artificial
conditions, no disadvantage. Our domestic breeds
could never have come into existence in a wild state,
and if turned wild " must return to something near
the type of the original wild stock, or become
altogether extinct"*

Hence we cannot argue from domestic to wild
animals, the conditions of life in the two being
completely opposed.

Lamarck's hypothesis of change produced by the
attempts of animals to increase the development of

* Wallace has added the following note to the reprint in "Natural
Selection and Tropical Nature," London, 1891, p. 31: "That is,
they will vary, and the variations which tend to adapt them to the
wild state, and therefore approximate them to wild animals, will he
preserved. Those individuals which do not vary sufficiently will
perish,"

76 CHARLES DARWIN.

their own organs has been often refuted, but the view
here proposed Depends upon the action of principles
constantly working in nature. Retractile talons of
falcons and cats have not been developed by volition,
but by the survival of those which had the greatest
facilities for seizing prey. The long neck of the
giraffe was not produced by constant stretching, but
by the success which any increase in the length of
neck ensured to its possessors. Even colours, especi-
ally of insects, are explained in the same way, for
among the varieties of many tints, those "having
colours best adapted to concealment . . . would in-
evitably survive the longest." We can similarly
explain deficiency of some organs with compensating
development of others, " great velocity making up for
the absence of defensive weapons," etc. Varieties
with an unbalanced deficiency could not long survive.
The action of the principle is like the governor of a
steam-engine, checking irregularities almost before
they become evident. Such a view accords well with
" the many lines of divergence from a central type " ;
the increasing efficiency of a particular organ in a
series of allied species ; the persistence of unimportant
parts when important ones have changed ; the " more
specialised structure," said by Owen to be character-
istic of recent as compared with extinct forms.

Hence there is a tendency of certain classes of
varieties to progress further and further from the
original type, and there is no reason for. assigning any
limit to this progression. Such gradual changes

WALLACE'S ESSAY. 77

" may, it is believed, be followed out so as to agree
with all the phenomena presented by organised
beings, their extinction and succession in past ages,
and all the extraordinary modifications of form,
instinct, and habits which they exhibit."

Wallace's Essay has been reprinted without
alteration in his " Essays on Natural Selection,"
recently re-issued combined with " Tropical Nature."

78

CHAPTER XL

COMPARISON OF DARWIN'S AND WALLACE'S SECTIONS
OF THE JOINT MEMOIR — RECEPTION OF THEIR
VIEWS — THEIR FRIENDSHIP.

COMPARING the essays of these two naturalists, we
observe that Darwin here first makes public the
phrase " natural selection," Wallace the " struggle for
existence " ; although so closely do their lines of
thought converge that Darwin, using practically the
same words, speaks of the "struggle for life." Both
show, by examples, the tendency of all animals to
multiply at an enormous rate, and both show that
their tolerably constant numbers are due to the
constant supply of food.

Both treat of domesticated animals, but in very
different ways. Darwin uses them as the practical
illustration of selection, and argues that- if man by
selection can make such forms, Nature can make her
species by the same means. Wallace disposes of the
argument that the reversion of domesticated varieties
to the wild form is a proof of the permanent distinct-
ness of species, by showing in some detail that the
former are " abnormal, irregular, artificial."

Neither of them draws any distinction between
instinct and other qualities, but assumes that the

-WALLACE AND DARWIN. 79

former is, like the latter, operated upon by natural
selection.

Wallace makes a special point of protective
resemblances in the colours of insects, etc.

The important principle of "divergence of char-
acter," and the relatively unimportant one of " sexual
selection," are both clearly explained by Darwin.

Neither writer speaks of the direct effect of
external conditions — except as a cause of plasticity
by Darwin — or the inherited effects of use and disuse.
Lamarck is mentioned only to be dismissed by
Wallace. The evolution of the giraffe's long neck is
explained by Wallace on the principle of natural
selection, which is contrasted with Lamarck's original
explanation of the same character. This contrast,
which has been so often drawn, was therefore
originally contained in the first public statement of
natural selection.

As has been indicated above, Darwin suggested a
cause of variation in the direct effect of changed
external conditions on the reproductive system.

In comparing the two essays it is not unnatural
to conclude, as Professor Osborn has done ("From
the Greeks to Darwin," 1894, p. 245), that the two
writers held different views upon the material
utilised by natural selection in the production of
new species, Darwin relying upon the usual slight
differences which separate individuals and upon
variations in single characters, Wallace upon fully
formed varieties — viz. individuals which departed

/^!

UNIVLiWrilTY |

U

80 CHARLES DARWIN.

conspicuously from the type of the species, and
which may exist singly or in considerable numbers
side by side with the parent form.

Professor Osborn's actual words are as follows : —

" Darwin dwells upon variations in single characters, as
taken hold of by Selection ; Wallace mentions variations, but
dwells upon full-formed varieties, as favourably or unfavour-
ably adapted. It is perfectly clear that with Darwin the
struggle is so intense that the chance of survival of each
individual turns upon a single and even slight variation.
With Wallace, varieties are already presupposed by causes
which he does not discuss, a change in the environment occurs,
and those varieties which happen to be adapted to it survive.
There is really a wide gap between these two statements and
applications of the theory."

Further consideration tends to obliterate this
supposed distinction. Although Wallace used the
term "variety" as contrasted with "species," the
whole context proves that he, equally with Darwin,
recognised the importance of individual variations
and of variations in single characters. This becomes
clear when we remember his argument about the
neck of the giraffe, the changes of colour and hairi-
ness, the shorter legs of the antelope, and the less
powerful wings of the passenger pigeon. Wallace
has kindly written to me (May 12th, 1896) stating
the case as I have given it, and he further explains—

" I used the term ' varieties ' because ' varieties ' were alone
recognised at that time, individ1 variability being ignored
or thought of no importance. My 'varieties' therefore in-
cluded ' individual variations.' "

WALLACE AND DARWIN. 81

On the other hand, Darwin certainly included
large single variations (in other words, " varieties ") as
well as ordinary individual differences, among the
material for natural selection, and he did not abandon
the former until he was convinced by the powerful
reasoning of Fleeming Jenkin (North British Review,
June, 1867), who argued that single large differences
of a sudden and conspicuous kind (Darwin's " varia-
tions ") would certainly be swamped by intercrossing.
Upon this review of the " Origin " Francis Darwin
says (" Life and Letters ") —

" It is not a little remarkable that the criticisms which my
father, as I believe, felt to be the most valuable ever made on
his views should have come, not from a professed naturalist
but from a Professor of Engineering."

After reading this review, Darwin wrote to
Wallace (January 22nd, 1869) :—

"I always thought individual differences more important
than single variations, but now I have come to the conclusion
that they are of paramount importance, and in this I believe
I agree with you. Fleeming Jenkin's arguments have con-
vinced me."

The ambiguity of this sentence evidently misled
Wallace into believing that the single variations were
considered of paramount importance. Darwin there-
fore wrote again (February 2nd) : —

" I must have expressed myself atrociously ; I meant to say
exactly the reverse of what you have understood. F. Jenkin
argued in the 'North British Review' (June 1867) against

82 CHARLES DAllWiN.

single variations ever being perpetuated, and has convinced me,
though not in quite so broad a manner as here put. I always
thought individual differences more important ; but I was
blind and thought single variations might be preserved much
oftener than I now see is possible or probable. I mentioned
this in my former note merely because I believed that you
had come to a similar conclusion, and I like much to be in
accord with you. I believe I was mainly deceived by single
variations offering such simple illustrations, as when man
selects."

From these two letters to Wallace we see that the
latter was the first to give up the larger variations in
favour of ordinary individual differences.

Darwin also wrote to Victor Carus on May 4th,
1869 :—

" I have been led to ... infer that single variations
are even of less importance, in comparison with individual
differences, than I formerly thought."

There has been much misconception on this
point, and a theory of evolution by the selection of
large single variations — a view held by many, but
not by Darwin — has been passed off as the Darwinian
theory of natural selection. It is surprising that
this old mistake should have been repeated at so
recent a date, and on so important an occasion as
the Presidential Address to the British Association
at Oxford on August 8th, 1894, and that so ill-aimed
a criticism should have been quoted with approval
in a leading article in the Times of the following
day. The following extracts from Lord Salisbury's
address unfortunately leave no doubt on the matter :

LORD SALISBURY'S CRITICISM. 83

" What is to secure that the two individuals of opposite sexes
in the primeval forest, who have been both accidentally blessed
with the same advantageous variation shall meet, and transmit
by inheritance that variation to their successors ? . . . The bi-
ologists do well to ask for an immeasurable expanse of time, if
the occasional meetings of advantageously varied couples from
age to age are to provide the pedigree of modifications which
unite us to our ancestor the jelly-fish. . . . There would be
nothing but mere chance to secure that the advantageously
varied bridegroom at one end of the wood should meet the
bride, who by a happy contingency had been advantageously
varied in the same direction at the same time at the other end
of the wood. It would be a mere chance if they ever knew of
each other's existence — a still more unlikely chance that they
should resist on both sides all temptations to a less advan-
tageous alliance. But unless they did so, the new breed would
never even begin, let alone the question of its perpetuation
after it had begun,"

It is of interest to reproduce Lord Salisbury's
words in close proximity to Darwin's real state-
ments on the subject, as shown in the letters to
his friends — statements which are also expressed in
many places in his published works.

The joint paper was read before the Linnoun
Society on July 1st, 1858, about a fortnight
after Wallace's essay had been received by Darwin.
There was no discussion, but the interest and
excitement at the meeting were very great,
owing in large part to the influential support with
which the new theory came before the scientific
world. Darwin appreciated the importance of this
support at its true value, for he wrote to Hooker,
July 5th :—

84 CHARLES DARWIN.

" You must know that I look at it, as very important, for
the reception of the view of species not being immutable, the
fact of the greatest Geologist and Botanist in England taking
any sort of interest in the subject : I am sure it will do much
to break down prejudices."

In the following January Darwin received a letter
from Wallace, and his reply (on the 25th) shows how
much relieved and pleased he was at its generous
spirit. Alluding to Lyell's and Hooker's action in his
" Autobiography " Darwin says : — " I was at first very
unwilling to consent, as I thought Mr. Wallace
might consider my doing so unjustifiable, for I did
not then know how generous and noble was his
disposition." It was this letter which conveyed the
knowledge to him and set his mind at rest on the
subject.

Thus ended one of the most interesting and
memorable episodes in the history of science. It Avas
sufficiently remarkable that two naturalists in widely-
separated lands should have independently arrived
at the theory which was to be the turning-point in
the history of biology and of many other sciences —
although such simultaneous discoveries have been
known before; it was still more remarkable that one
of the two should unknowingly have chosen the
other to advise him upon the theory which was to
be for ever associated with both their names. It
was a magnificent answer to those who believed that
the progress of scientific discovery implies continual
jealousy and bitterness, that the conditions attending

FRIENDSHIP WITH WALLACE. 85

the first publication of the theory of natural selection
were the beginning of a life-long friendship and of
mutual confidence and esteem.*

It is justifiable to speak of this episode as the
beginning of Darwin's and Wallace's friendship, for
the latter writes (February, 1895) : —

" I had met him once only for a few minutes at the Brit.
Mus. before I went to the East."

Later on Darwin, in his letters to Wallace, more
than once alluded to the simultaneous publication of
their essays. Thus he wrote, April 18th, 1869, con-
gratulating Wallace on his article in the Quarterly
Review for that month :—

" I w(as also much pleased at your discussing the difference
between our views and Lamarck's. One sometimes sees the
odious expression, ' Justice to myself compels me to say,' &c.,
but you are the only man I ever heard of who persistently
does himself an injustice, and never demands justice. Indeed,
you ought in the review to have alluded to your paper in the
' Linnean Journal,' and I feel sure all our friends will agree
in this. But you cannot ' Burke ' yourself however much you
may try, as may be seen in half the articles which appear."

* Since the above paragraph was written I have again read
Professor Newton's eloquent Address to the Biological Section of
the British Association at Manchester in 1887, and find that he says
on the same subject — " If in future you should meet with any cynic
who may point the finger of scorn at the petty quarrels in which
naturalists unfortunately at times engage, particularly in regard to
the priority of their discoveries, you can always refer him to this
greatest of all cases, where scientific rivalry not only did not inter-
fere with, but even strengthened, the good-feeling which existed
between two of the most original investigators" (Report of Meeting,
p. 731).

86 CHARLES DARWIN .

And again, on April 20th of the following year,
he wrote : —

" I hope it is a satisfaction to you to reflect — and very few
things in my life have been more satisfactory to me — that we
have never felt any jealousy towards each other, though in
one sense rivals. I believe that I can say this of myself with
truth, and I am absolutely sure that it is true of you."

87

CHAPTER XII.

THE GROWTH OF WALLACE'S CONVICTIONS ON EVOLU-
TION AND DISCOVERY OF NATURAL SELECTION —
BORNEO 1855 — TERNATE 1858.

WE have already seen in the earlier part of this
volume, the gradual development of the theory of
Natural Selection in the mind of Darwin, and the long
succession of experiments and observations which he
undertook before he could bring himself to publish any-
thing upon the subject, as well as the conditions which
forced him to a hurried publication in the end. It
is of the deepest interest to compare with this the
account which Wallace has given us of the mental
process by which he arrived at the same conclusions.

This deeply interesting personal history has only
been known during the last few years ; in 1891 Wallace
republished his "Essays on Natural Selection" in
one volume, combined with "Tropical Nature," and
he has added (on pp. 20, 21) the following introductory
note to Chapter II., viz. the reprint of his Linnean
Society Memoir " On the Tendencies of Varieties to
depart indefinitely from the Original Type." The
note is here reprinted in full : —

" As this chapter sets forth the main features of a theory
identical with that discovered by Mr. Darwin many years

88 CHARLES DARWIN.

before but not then published, and as it has thus an
historical interest, a few words of personal statement may
be permissible. After writing the preceding paper [" On
the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New
Species"] the question of how changes of species could have
been brought about was rarely out of my mind, but no
satisfactory conclusion was reached till February 1858. At
that time I was suffering from a rather severe attack of
intermittent fever at Ternate in the Moluccas, and one clay,
while lying on my bed during the cold fit, wrapped in
blankets, though the thermometer was at 88° Fahr., the
problem again presented itself to me, and something led me to
think 'of the 'positive checks' described by Malthus in his
'Essay on Population,' a work I had read several years
before, and which had made a deep and permanent impression
on my mind. These checks — war, disease, famine and the like —
must, it occurred to me, act on animals as well as man. Then
I thought of the enormously rapid multiplication of animals,
causing these checks to be much more effective in them than
in the case of man ; and while pondering vaguely on this fact
there suddenly flashed upon me the idea of the survival of the
fittest — that the individuals removed by these checks must be
on the whole inferior to those that survived. In the two hours
that elapsed before my ague fit was over I had thought out
almost the whole of the theory, and the same evening I
sketched the draft of my paper, and in the two succeeding
evenings wrote it out in full, and sent it by the next post to
Mr. Darwin. Up to this time the only letters I had received
from him were those printed in the second volume of his
Life and Letters (vol. ii., pp. 95 and 108). in which he speaks
of its being the twentieth year since he ' opened his first
note-book on the question how and what way do species and
varieties differ from each other,' and after referring to oceanic
islands, the means of distribution of land-shells, &c., added :
' My work, on which I have now been at woi'k more or less for
twenty years, will not fix or settle anything ; but I hope it
will aid by giving a large collection of facts, with one definite
end.' The words I have italicised, and the whole tone of his
letters, led me to conclude that he had arrived at no definite
view as to the origin of species, and I fully anticipated that

ORIGIN OF WALLACE'S ESSAY. 89

my theory would be new to him, because it seemed to me to
settle a great deal. The immediate result of my paper was
that Darwin was induced at once to prepare for publication his
book on the Origin of Species in the condensed form in which
it appeared, instead of waiting an indefinite number of years to
complete a work on a much larger scale which he had partly
written, but which in all probability would not have carried
conviction to so many persons in so short a time. I feel much
satisfaction in having thus aided in bringing about the publica-
tion of this celebrated book, and with the ample recognition
by Darwin himself of my independent discovery of ' natural
selection.' (See Origin of Species, 6th ed., introduction,
p. 1, and Life and Letters, vol. ii., chap, iv., pp. 115-129
and 145)."

A very similar account, differing in a few unimpor-
tant details from that quoted above, was written
December 3rd, 1887, by Wallace to Professor Newton,
and is published in the abridged " Life and Letters of
Charles Darwin " (1892 ; pp.189, 190). At the con-
clusion Wallace says : —

". . . . I had the idea of working it out, so far as I was
able, when I returned home, not at all expecting that Darwin
had so long anticipated me. I can truly say now, as I said
many years ago, that I am glad it was so ; for I have not the
love of work, experiment and detail that was so pre-eminent in
Darwin, and without which anything I could have written
would never have convinced the world."

It is of great interest to learn that Wallace as well
as Darwin was directed to natural selection by Malthus'
Essay. Hence, as the late Professor Milnes Marshall
has pointed out (Lectures on the Darwinian Theory,
pp. 212, 213), the laws of the multiplication and
extinction of man suggested to both naturalists

90 CHARLES DARWIN.

those more general laws by which it was possible to
understand the development of the whole animal and
vegetable worlds.

There is a tremendous contrast between these two
discoverers, in the speed with which they respectively
developed their ideas on the subject into a shape
which satisfied them as suitable for publication.
Wallace, after the inspiration which followed his
reflections upon Malthus, had " thought oui almost
the whole of the theory " in two hours, and in three
evenings had completed his essay. Darwin, receiving
the same inspiration from the same source, in October
1838, wrote a brief account of it after four years'
reflection and work, and finished a longer account two
years later, but was not prepared to give anything to
the public until he was compelled to do so fourteen
years later in 1858. All this delay was of the greatest
advantage when a full exposition of the theory finally
came before the world in the " Origin of Species " ; for
all difficulties had been fully considered and answered
beforehand, while the wealth of new facts by which it
was supported compelled a respectful hearing for the
theory itself.

Wallace, like Darwin, was convinced of evolution
before he discovered any principle which supplied a
motive cause for the process. This conviction is
expressed very clearly in his interesting essay already
alluded to " On the Law which has regulated the
Introduction of New Species " (Ann. and Mag., Nat.
Hist., 1855, p. 184; reprinted without alteration in his

WALLACE'S VIEWS. 91

Essays on Natural Selection). The law he states in
these words: —

" Every species has come into existence coincident both in
time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species,"

a law which, as he justly claims for it,

" connects together and renders intelligible a vast number of
independent and hitherto unexplained facts. The natural
system of arrangement of organic beings, their geographical
distribution, their geological sequence, the phenomena of
representative and substituted groups in all their modifica-
tions, and the most singular peculiarities of anatomical
structure, are all explained and illustrated by it, in perfect
accordance with the vast mass of facts which the researches
of modern naturalists have brought together, and, it is
believed, not materially opposed to any of them. It also
claims a superiority over previous hypotheses, on the ground
that it not merely explains, but necessitates what exists.
Granted the law, and many of the most important facts in
Nature could not have been otherwise, but are almost as
necessary deductions from it, as are the elliptic orbits of the
planets from the law of gravitation."

This important essay is dated by Wallace from
Sarawak, Borneo, February, 1855.

The conclusions remind us of the words Darwin
wrote in his note-book in 1837. " Led to comprehend
true affinities. My theory would give zest to recent
and Fossil comparative Anatomy." By his theory
Darwin here means evolution and not natural selec-
tion, which was not discovered by him until the end
of 1838.

92

•CHAPTER XIII.

CANON TRISTRAM THE FIRST PUBLICLY TO ACCEPT THE
THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION (1859).

ALTHOUGH the historic meeting at the Linnean
Society appeared to produce but little effect, one
distinguished naturalist publicly accepted the theory
of natural selection before the publication of " The
Origin of Species," and therefore as the direct result
of Darwin's and Wallace's joint paper. This great
distinction belongs to Canon Tristram, as Professor
Newton has pointed out in his Presidential Address
to the Biological Section of the British Association at
Manchester in 1887 (" Reports," p. 727), at the same
time expressing the hope " that thereby the study of
Ornithology may be said to have been lifted above
its fellows."

Canon Tristram's paper, " On the Ornithology of
Northern Africa" (Part iii., The Sahara, continued),
was published in The Ibis, vol. i., October, 1859. The
important conclusions alluded to above are contained
at the end of the section upon the species of desert
larks (pp. 429-433) :

" Writing with a series of about 100 larks of various species
from the Sahara before me, I cannot help feeling convinced
of the truth of the views set forth by Messrs. Darwin and
Wallace in their communications to the Linnean Society, to
which my friend Mr. A. Newton last year directed my atten-
tion. ... It is hardly possible, I should think, to illustrate
this theory better than by the larks and chats of North Africa."

CANON TRISTRAM'S SUPPORT. 93

In all these birds we trace gradual modifications of coloration
and of anatomical structure, deflecting by very gentle grada-
tions from the ordinary type ; but when we take the extremes,
presenting most marked differences."

These differences, he concludes —

"have a very direct bearing on the ease or difficulty with
which the animal contrives to maintain its existence."

He then points out, upon the uniform surface of
the desert it is absolutely necessary that animals shall
be protected by their colour :

"Hence, without exception, the upper plumage of every
bird, whether Lark, Chat, Sylvian, or Sandgrouse, and also the
fur of all the small mammals, and the skin of all the Snakes
and Lizards, is of one uniform isabelline or sand colour. It is
very possible that some further purpose may be served by
the prevailing colours, but this appears of itself a sufficient
explanation. There are individual varieties in depth of hue
among all creatures. In the struggle for life which we know
to be going on among all species, a very slight change for the
better, such as improved means of escaping from its natural
enemies (which would be the effect of an alteration from a
conspicuous colour to one resembling the hue of the surround-
ing objects), would give the variety that possessed it a decided
advantage over the typical or other forms of the species.
Now in all creatures, from Man downwards, we find a
tendency to transmit individual varieties or peculiarities to
the descendants. A peculiarity either of colour or form soon
becomes hereditary when there are no counteracting causes,
either from change of climate or admixture of other blood.
Suppose this transmitted peculiarity to continue for some
generations, especially when manifest advantages arise from
its possession, and the variety becomes not only a race, with its
variations still more strongly imprinted upon it, but it becomes
the typical form of that country."

Canon Tristram then points out the manner in
which he imagines that one of the crested larks of

94 CHARLES DARWIN.

the desert has been produced by the survival of
the lightest coloured individuals, Galerida abyssinica
only differing in this respect from G. cristata of
Europe. Short-billed species of the same genus
inhabiting hard rocky districts, and long-billed
inhabiting loose sandy tracts have, he believes, been
produced by the survival in each case of the forms of
bill most suited to procure food :

" Here are only two causes enumerated which might serve
to create as it were a new species from an old one, yet they
are perfectly natural causes, and such as, I think, must have
occurred, and are possibly occurring still. We know so very
little of the causes which in the majority of cases make species
rare or common, that there may be hundreds of others at
work, some even more powerful than these, which go to
perpetuate and eliminate certain forms 'according to natural
means of selection.' But even these superficial causes appear
sufficient to explain the marked features of the Desert races,
which frequently approach so very closely the typical form,
and yet possess such invariably distinctive characteristics, that
naturalists seem agreed to elevate them to the rank of
species."

Although the author also declares his belief in the
special creation of many species — a view put forward
as possible by Darwin in the "Origin"* — and also
believed in some direct influence of locality, climate,
etc., the above quoted passnges are a most complete
acceptance of natural selection, at the same time
affording excellent examples of its operation.

* " There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally "breathed by the Creator into a few forms or
into one ; . . ." — (Concluding paragraph of " Origin," I860. p. 490.)

95

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PREPARATION OF " THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES '
(1858-59).

ALMOST immediately after the Linnean Society meet-
ing, and evidently earlier than September, the time
mentioned in his "Autobiography," Darwin began
to prepare a longer and more complete account of
his work on evolution and natural selection. This
account was at first intended for the Linnean Society,
but it was soon found to be too long, and he then
decided to publish it as an independent volume. In
thus preparing the manuscript for what afterwards
became the " Origin of Species," Darwin tells us
(" Autobiography ") he acted under u the strong
advice of Lyell and Hooker," and his letters also
show "the great interest that they were taking in
the work.

Darwin seems to have found the " Origin " — or his
"Abstract," as he always calls it — very hard work;
and he ends his letter to Wallace (January 25th,
1859) with the words :

"I look at my own career as nearly run out. If I can
publish my Abstract and perhaps my greater work on the
same subject, I shall look at my course as done."

At the same time, so great was his enthusiasm and

o

interest, in spite of the hard work and ill-health, that

96 CHARLES DARWIN.

all through this period he was making fresh observa-
tions whenever an opportunity occurred. Thus we
find him writing to Hooker about the thistle-down
blown out to sea and then back to shore again ; about
the migrations of slave-making ants which he had
been watching ; about the bending of the pistil into
the line of the gangway leading to the honey when
this latter " is secreted at one point of the circle of
the corolla," etc. And on March 2nd, 1859, he writes
about " an odd, though very little, tact " : — Large nuts
had been found in the crops of some nestling Petrels
at St. Kilda, which he suspected the parent birds had
picked up from the Gulf Stream. He arranged lor
one of these to be sent, and asked Hooker for the
name and country. He asks forgiveness for the
trouble, "for it is a funny little fact after my own
heart." The nuts turned out to be West Indian.

When the proposal for publication had been ac-
cepted by Murray and the manuscript was assuming its
final form, the letters to Hooker were more frequent
than ever. Writing on May llth, 1859, Darwin again
raises the question of the relative importance of varia-
tion and selection.

"I imagine from some expressions . . . that you look at-
variability as some necessary contingency with organisms,
and further that there is some necessary tendency in the
variability to go on diverging in character or degree. If you
do, I do not agree."

Darwin's splendid confidence in the future appears
in a letter written about this time (September 2, 1859)

THE "tORIGIN " PUBLISHED. 97

in which he begs Lyell not to commit himself " to go
a certain length and no further ; for," he says, " I am
deeply convinced that it is absolutely necessary to
go the whole vast length, or stick to the creation of
each separate species." He asks Lyell to remember
that his verdict will probably be of more importance
than the book itself in influencing the present accept-
ance or rejection of the views. " In the future," he
continues, "I cannot doubt about their admittance,
and our posterity will marvel as much about the cur-
rent belief as we do about fossil shells having been
thought to have been created as we now see them."
And again writing to Lyell a few days later (Septem-
ber 20th), he says, " I cannot too strongly express my
conviction of the general truth of my doctrines, and
God knows I have never shirked a difficulty."

I have thought it well to bring strong evidence of
Darwin's entire confidence in his conclusions, because
his writings were so extraordinarily balanced and
judicial, and the weight he gives to opposing con-
siderations so great, that a superficial student might
imagine that he wrote and argued without any very
strong convictions.

The letters to Mr. John Murray, the publisher, are
eminently characteristic, in the expressions of regret
for trouble given, and of pleasure at the work done, in
the scrupulous care to prevent the publisher from feel-
ing committed, if on further acquaintance with the
manuscript he did not wish to accept it, and in the
offer to contribute towards the cost of corrections.

98 CHARLES DARWIN.

The first edition of " The Origin of Species " was
published November 24th, 1859. The edition con-
sisted of 1,250 copies, all of which were sold on the
day of issue.

The full title of this volume, of which Darwin justly
says ("Autobiography"), "It is no doubt the chief
work of my life," is reproduced below.

ON

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION,

PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE
FOR LIFE.

BY CHARLES DARWIN, M.A.,

FELLOW OP THE ROYAL, GEOLOGICAL, LINNEAN, ETC., SOCIETIES ;

AUTHOR OF "JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES DURING H.M.S. 'BEAGLE'S' VOYAGI
ROUND THE WORLD."

THE "ORIGIN" PUBLISHED. 99

This title is of interest, as has been pointed out by
Professor E. Ray Lankester, in relation to the con-
troversy upon the exact meaning of the word
u Darwinism." Some writers have argued that the
term " Darwinism " includes the whole of the causes of
evolution accepted by Darwin — the supposed inherited
effects of use and disuse and the direct influence of
environment, which find a subordinate place in the
" Origin," as well as natural selection, which is the real
subject of the book and which is fully denned in the
title. It would seem appropriate to use the term
" Darwinism," as Wallace uses it, to indicate the causes
of evolution which were suggested by Darwin himself,
excluding those supposed causes which had been
previously brought forward by earlier writers, and
especially by Lamarck. The causes of evolution pro-
posed by Lamarck are seriously disputed, and it is
possible that they may be ultimately abandoned. If
so, the integrity of "Darwinism," as interpreted by
some controversialists, would be impaired ; and this,
it will be generally admitted, would be most unfortu-
nate, as well as most unfair to the memory of Darwin.

OK

UN

100

CHAPTER XY.

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (1859).

IT is very interesting to separate the two arguments
which occur interwoven in the " Origin " — the argu-
ment for evolution and the argument for natural
selection. The paramount importance of Darwin's
contributions to the evidences of organic evolution
are often forgotten in the brilliant theory which
he believed to supply the motive cause of descent
with modification. Organic evolution had been
held to be true by certain thinkers during many
centuries; but not only were its adherents entirely
without a sufficient motive cause, but their evidences
of the process itself were erroneous or extremely
scanty. It was Darwin who first brought together a
great body of scientific evidence which placed the pro-
cess of evolution beyond dispute, whatever the causes
of evolution may have been. And accordingly we find
that, even at first, natural selection was attacked far
more generally than the doctrine of descent with
modification.

In Chapter I., Variation under Domestication and
man's power of selection in forming breeds of animals
and plants are discussed ; in Chapter II., Variation
under Nature ; in Chapter III., the Struggle for

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 101

Existence ; in Chapter IV., which Darwin, in writing
to his publisher, called " the Keystone of my Arch,"
the three preceding chapters are carried to their con-
clusion, and the operation of natural selection is
explained and discussecl. Hence, these four chapters
deal almost exclusively with this process.

Chapter V. has for its subject the Laws of Varia-
tion, and explains causes of modification (external
conditions, use and disuse, correlation, reversion, etc.)
other than natural selection and the relation of the
latter to the former.

In Chapter VI. difficulties are considered — partly
those in the way of a belief in evolution and partly
those which, at first sight, seem to be incapable of
explanation on the theory of natural selection.
Chapter VII. deals with a special difficulty of the
latter kind, viz. Instinct, and shows how it can be
accounted for by natural selection acting upon varia-
tion, although allowing some weight to the inheritance
of habit. Chapter VIII. deals with Hybridism, the
sterility of first crosses and of hybrids being con-
sidered as an objection to the doctrine of Descent
with Modification. Chapter IX. treats of the Imper-
fection of the Geological Kecord as the explanation of
the apparently insufficient evidence of evolution during
past ages. Chapter X., on the Geological succession
of Organic Beings, shows that, allowing for this
Imperfection of Record, the facts brought to light by
Geology support a belief in evolution and in some
cases even in natural selection. Hence these five

102 CHARLES DARWIN.

chapters deal partly with difficulties in the way of an
acceptance of orgfanic evolution and partly with those
encountered by natural selection.

Of the three remaining chapters before the XlVth,
and last, which contains the Recapitulation and
Conclusion, two — XI. and XII. — are concerned with
Geographical distribution, while the XHIth deals with
Classification, Morphology, Embryology and Rudi-
mentary Organs. These three chapters are almost
entirely devoted to the proof that the facts of Nature
with which they deal are not inconsistent with, but
rather support, and often strongly support, a belief in
Organic Evolution.

Hence we see that this, incomparably the greatest
work which the biological sciences have seen, begins
with an explanation and defence and definition of
the sphere of natural selection — then passes to con-
sider difficulties which are partly those of natural
selection, and partly of organic evolution — while it
finally treats of the evidences of the latter process
and the difficulties which a belief in it encounters.

This arrangement was a very wise one for a book
which was intended to convince a large circle of
readers; for the human mind so craves after an
explanation, that it was of more importance for the
success of the work to show first that an intelligible
cause of evolution had been proposed, than to follow
the more logical order of first setting forth the
evidences of evolution.

The second edition (fifth thousand) was issued in

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 103

January, 1860, the third (seventh thousand) in 1861,
the fourth (eighth thousand) in 1866, the fifth (tenth
thousand) in 1869, the sixth in 1872 : in 1887 the
twenty-fourth thousand was reached.

A note to the last edition states that the second
" was little more than a reprint of the first. The
third edition was largely corrected and added to, and
the fourth and fifth still more largely." The sixth
edition also contains " numerous small corrections,"
and is about one-fourth larger than the first edition,
although this material is, owing to the smaller print
and more crowded lines, compressed into a smaller
number of pages. The sixth edition also differs from
the first in containing a glossary, an historical sketch,
and a note and list of the chief corrections.

The titles of Chapters I., II., and III. remain the
same in the first and last editions. Herbert Spencer's
phrase is added to Darwin's term, as the heading of
Chapter IV., which accordingly becomes in the last
edition " Natural Selection ; or the Survival of the
Fittest." This change was certainly introduced in
order to help readers to grasp the meaning of Darwin's
title, which had been very generally misunderstood.
The heading of Chapter V. remains the same, while
in Chapter VI.—" Difficulties on Theory" — "on" is
replaced by " of the." This chapter is, in the last
edition, succeeded by a new one dealing with many
of the difficulties which had been raised or had
occurred to Darwin in the interval between the two
editions ; it is headed " Miscellaneous Objections to

104 CHARLES DARWIN.

the Theory of Natural Selection." The titles of the
remaining eight chapters are unchanged.

The first part of the title of the first edition—
" On the Origin of Species " — becomes " The Origin
of Species" in the last edition, and is still further
shortened to "Origin of Species" on the outside
of the volume.

The form of the earlier editions was admirably
suited for the purpose of attracting, and — so far as was
possible with so difficult a subject — convincing, a
large number of readers. When the subject was new
and strange, the more numerous details of the last
edition, and the smaller print which became necessary,
would have acted as a hindrance to the complete
success of the work. Authors and publishers are
sometimes apt to forget that the form of a book
has a great deal to do with the absorption of the
ideas contained in it, especially when the argument
is from the nature of the case difficult to follow, and
the subject a new one. Francis Darwin in the " Life
and Letters " justly condemns the unattractive form
of the sixth edition of the work.

105

CHAPTER XVI.

THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON LYELL (1859-G4).

IN considering the reception of the "Origin of
Species," it will be well first to show its effect
upon Darwin's intimate scientific friends, most
of whom had been familiar with his work for
many years, and then to deal with its effects upon
biologists generally, especially those of Darwin's own
country.

The gradual strengthening of Darwin's influence
over his old teacher Lyell, is one of the most in-
teresting episodes in the personal history of the
scientific men of this century.

Lyell, after reading the proof-sheets of the
" Origin," wrote on October 3rd, 1859, praising the
work very warmly, and suggesting a few improve-
ments, some of which were adopted. Lyell hesitated
to accept the theory, because he saw clearly that it
would be impossible to stop short at the human
species, while a common origin of men and beasts
was distasteful to him. Thus, he said : —

" I have long seen most clearly that if any concession is
made, all that you claim in your concluding pages will follow.
It is this which has made me so long hesitate, always feeling
that the case of man and his races, and of other animals, and
that of plants is one and the same, and that if a ' vera causa ; be

106 CHARLES DARWIN.

admitted for one, instead of a purely unknown and imaginary
one, such as the word ' Creation,' all the consequences
must follow."

To this letter Darwin replied (October llth) at
great length, in a most instructive letter, arguing
in considerable detail on all the points alluded to
by Lyell. He evidently thought that Ly ell's opinion
was of the utmost importance for the success of
Natural Selection. " If ever you are [perverted]," he
wrote at the end of the letter, " I shall know that
the theory of Natural Selection is, in the main,
safe."

About this time Darwin seems to have heard
that Lyell had made up his mind to admit the
doctrine of evolution into a new edition of the
"Manual," and he wrote (November 23rd):—

" I honour you most sincerely. To have maintained in the
position of a master, one side of a question for thirty years,
and then deliberately give it up, is a fact to which I much
doubt whether the records of science offer a parallel."

Lyell's public confession of faith was, however, not
to be made for some years, and* Darwin's letter was
a little premature.

Space will not permit me to quote from the long
correspondence with Lyell in the years following the
appearance of the " Origin," although these letters
are of the deepest interest, and deal in the most
luminous manner with the difficulties of natural
selection and evolution, as they appeared to one of
the acutest intellects of that time. The letters soon

LYELL'S SLOW CONVERSION. 107

began to produce an effect, and Darwin wrote
(September 26th, 1860) to Asa Gray:-—

" I can perceive in my immense correspondence with Lyell,
who objected to much at first, that he has, perhaps un-
consciously to himself, converted himself very much during
the last six months, and I think this is the case even with
Hooker. This fact gives me far more confidence than any
other fact."

Later on Darwin evidently became a little annoyed
that Lyell still delayed to declare his belief one way
or the other. Thus he wrote to Asa Gray (May llth,
1863) :—

" You speak of Lyell as a judge ; now what I complain of
is that he declines to be a judge. . . 1 have sometimes almost
wished that Lyell had pronounced against me. When I say
* me,' I only mean change of species by descent. That seems to
me the turning-point. Personally, of course, I care much about
Natural Selection ; but that seems to me utterly unimportant,
compared to the question of Creation or Modification."

Shortly before this date, on February 24th, he
wrote to Hooker in much the same style. These
communications were called forth by the appearance
of " The Antiquity ' of Man," and it is clear that
Darwin's disappointment at Ly ell's suspended judg-
ment was due to their correspondence, which had
encouraged him to expect some definite opinion on
the question. "From all my communications with
him, I must ever think that he has really entirely
lost faith in the immortality of species," he wrote
in his letter to Hooker. On March 6th he wrote to
Lyell himself, expressing his disappointment, and

108 CHARLES DARWIN.

again a few days later, rather complaining that his
work was treated, as a modification of Lamarck's :—

" This way of putting the case . . . closely connects Wallace's
and my views with what I consider, after two deliberate
readings, as a wretched book, and one from which (I well
remember my surprise) I gained nothing."

When the second edition of " The Antiquity of
Man " appeared in a few months, there was a signifi-
cant change in one sentence : —

" Yet we ought by no means to undervalue the importance
of the step which will have been made, should it hereafter
become the generally received opinion of men of science (as I
fully expect it will) that the past changes of the organic world
have been brought about by the subordinate agency of such
causes as Variation and Natural Selection."

The words in parentheses had been added, and
constituted I/yell's first public expression of an
opinion in favour of Darwin's views.

About this time an article appeared in the
Athenaeum (March 28th, 1863), attacking the opinions
in favour of evolution contained in Dr. Carpenter's
work on Forarninifera, and supporting spontaneous
generation. This was one of the rare occasions on
which Darwin entered into controversy, and he wrote
attacking spontaneous generation, and pointing out
the numerous classes of facts which are connected
by an intelligible thread of reasoning by means of
his theory. In this letter he quoted the altered
sentence from the second edition of the " Antiquity."
Darwin's letter was answered in an article (May 2nd)
in which it was argued that any theory of descent

ACCESSION OF LYELL. 109

would connect the various classes of facts equally
well. To this Darwin replied in a characteristic
letter. It was evident that he was most reluctant
to continue the controversy, but thought it fair to
admit publicly the force of his opponent's arguments.

In 1864 the Copley Medal of the Royal Society
was given to Darwin. At the anniversary dinner of
the Society, after the meeting at which the medals
are presented by the President, Sir Charles Lyell in
his speech made a " confession of faith " as to the
" Origin." Darwin was prevented by illness from
receiving the medal in person and from being present
at the dinner.

The tenth edition of the " Principles " was pub-
lished in 1867 and 1868, and in it Lyell clearly stated
his belief in evolution. Sir Joseph Hooker, in his
presidential address to the British Association at
Norwich in 1868, eloquently spoke of the " new
foundation " with which Lyell had under-pinned
the edifice he had raised, and had thus rendered it
" not only more secure, but more harmonious in its
proportion than it was before." Wallace, too, in an
article in the Quarterly Review (April, 1869), spoke
with equal eloquence and force of the significance
of Lyell's change of opinion.

Ly ell's death took place in 1875, eleven years
after his definite acceptance of Darwin's views.
Darwin, in writing to Miss Arabella Buckley (now
Mrs. Fisher, formerly secretary to Sir Charles Lyell),
fully acknowledged the deep debt which he owed to

110 CHARLES DARWIN.

Lyell's teachings : " I never forget that almost
everything which I have done in science I owe to
the study of his great works." Huxley says in his
obituary of Charles Darwin (reprinted in "Dar-
winiana," 1893, p. 268): "It is hardly too much
to say that Darwin's greatest work is the outcome
of the unflinching application to Biology of the lead-
ing idea and the method applied in the ' Principles '
to Geology." Every biologist who realises — as who
can help realising? — the boundless opportunities
which Darwin's work has opened for him, will feel
that he too owes a deep personal debt to Darwin's
great teacher.

Ill

CHAPTER XVII.

INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON HOOKER AND ASA GRAY
—NATURAL SELECTION AND DESIGN IN NATURE

(1860-68).

HOOKER wrote, on November 21st, speaking of the
" glorious book " in the warmest terms. Later on in
the year he wrote again in the same spirit, but
speaking of the difficulty he found in assimilating the
immense mass of details : " It is the very hardest
book to read, to full profits, that I ever tried — it is so
cram-full of matter and reasoning." Hooker must,
however, have been familiar with the arguments and
proofs, and for this reason did not attempt any
detailed discussion. It is unnecessary to say more of
Hooker's reception of the "Origin." During their
long friendship Darwin had discussed the difficulties
and the evidences of his theory more fully with him
than with any other man ; and, as " a man sharpeneth
the countenance of his friend," the influence of
Hooker was one of the most potent forces under
which Darwin produced the greatest work of his
life.

Many years later, when Hooker was awarded, in
1887, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, review-
ing his past experiences and work in his speech

112 CHARLES DARWIN.

at the anniversary dinner, he concluded by telling
us that his long and intimate friendship with
Charles Darwin was the great event of his scientific
career.

In sending a copy to Asa Gray, he wrote
(November llth):—

"I fully admit that there are very many difficulties not
satisfactorily explained by my theory of descent with modifica-
tion, but I cannot possibly believe that a false theory would
explain so many classes of facts as I think it certainly does
explain. On these grounds I drop my anchor, and believe
that the difficulties will slowly disappear."

Asa Gray's reply was contained in a letter to
Hooker, written January 5th, 1860, four days after
reading the " Origin." He asks that Darwin may be
told of what he had written. He says that the book
" is done in a masterly manner. It might well have
taken twenty years to produce it." He expressed the
intention of reviewing the book, and seeing that
Darwin and Hooker had fair play in America. A
little later (January 23rd) he wrote to Darwin about
the American reprint, etc., and spoke of the work
itself in somewhat greater detail : —

"The best part, I think, is the whole, i.e. its plan and
treatment, the vast amount of facts and acute inferences
handled as if you had a perfect mastery of them. . . . Then
your candour is worth everything to your cause. It is refresh-
ing to find a person with a new theory who frankly confesses
that he finds difficulties. . . . The moment I understood your
premisses, I felt sure you had a real foundation to hold on. ...
I am free to say that I never learnt so much from one book as
I have from j ours."

ASA GRAY. 113

He considered that the attempt to account for
the formation of organs such as eyes by natural
selection, was the weakest point in the book. This
view is to be explained by his strong teleological
convictions.

Although Asa Gray was the great exponent of the

" Origin " in America, he could not agree with Darwin

on one important point — viz. on the exclusion of the

ordinary conceptions of design in nature by the

principle of natural selection. He believed that the

two conceptions could be reconciled, and that design

in some way worked in and through natural selection.

By design is here meant what Huxley called "the

commoner and coarser form of teleology," and which

he believed to be now refuted — " the teleology which

supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or

one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the

precise structure it exhibits for the purpose of

enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has

undoubtedly received its death-blow." Huxley goes

on to point out that there is a " wider teleology,

which ... is actually based upon the fundamental

proposition of evolution . . . that the whole world . . .

is the result of the mutual interaction, according to

deiinite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules

of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was

composed." Therefore, " a sufficient intelligence

could, from a knowledge of the properties of the

molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say, the

state of the fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much

114 CHARLES DARWIN.

certainty as one can say what will happen to the
vapour of the» breath on a cold winter's day."
("Genealogy of Animals," The Academy, 1869, re-
printed in " Critiques and Addresses," and quoted in
his chapter " On the Reception of the ' Origin of
Species'" in the "Life and Letters," Vol. II.)

But at the time of the appearance of the " Origin,"
many who sympathised with the general drift of the
argument were not yet prepared for the " wider
teleology." Of these Asa Gray may be taken as the
representative ; and it will be of interest to follow the
controversy between him and Darwin as regards
design and natural selection. The recently published
" Letters of Asa Gray to Charles Darwin " (Macmillan)
enable us to follow the correspondence from the side
of the great American evolutionist.

Writing November 26th, 1860, Darwin refers to
one of Asa Gray's articles on the " Origin " : —

"I grieve to say that I cannot honestly go as far as you do
about Design. I am conscious that I am in an utterly hopeless
muddle. I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the
result of chance ; and yet I cannot look at each separate thing
as the result of Design. To take a crucial example, you lead
me to infer— that you believe 4 that variation has been led
along certain beneficial lines.' I cannot believe this ; and I
think you would have to believe, that the tail of the Faiitail
was led to vary in the number and direction of its feathers in
order to gratify the caprice of a few men. Yet if the Fan tail
had been a wild bird, and had used its abnormal tail for some
special end, as to sail before the wind, unlike other birds,
everyone would have said, ' What a beautiful and designed
adaptation.' Again, I say I am, and shall ever remain, in a
hopeless muddle."

ASA GRAY. 115

Elsewhere Darwin suggested that the pouter pigeon,
if it occurred wild, and used its inflated crop as a
float, would be considered as a striking example ot
design.

This controversy between them continued for
many years. We find Asa Gray referring to the
argument of the pigeons three years later. Thus he
wrote (September 1st, 1863) : —

"I will consider about fantastic variation of pigeons. I
see afar trouble enough ahead quoad design in nature, but
have managed to keep off the chilliness by giving the knotty
questions a rather wide berth. If I rather avoid, I cannot
ignore the difficulties ahead. But if I adopt your view boldly,
can you promise me any less difficulties ? "

Writing the concluding paragraphs of the " Varia-
tions of Animals and Plants under Domestication,"
Darwin evidently bore in mind his controversies on
the subject with Asa Gray and Lyell, and the attacks
of the Duke of Argyll and others. Sending advanced
sheets to Asa Gray, he wrote on October 16th,
1867 :—

"I finish my book with a semi-theological paragraph, in
which I quote and differ from you ; what you will think of it,
T know not."

In relation to this interesting controversy, I think
it well to quote, almost in full, the metaphor by
which Darwin enforced his argument that the origin
of species by natural selection precluded a belief in
design in nature as it was ordinarily conceived at the
time.

116 CHARLES DARWIN.

This metaphor forms an important part of the
conclusion of $ie work in question ("Variation of
Animals and Plants," etc.) :

" The long-continued accumulation of beneficial variations
will infallibly have led to structures as diversified, as beauti-
fully adapted for various purposes and as excellently co-
ordinated, as we see in the animals and plants around us.
Hence I have spoken of selection as the paramount power,
whether applied by man to the formation of domestic breeds,
or by nature to the production of species. I may recur to the
metaphor given in a former chapter : if an architect were to
rear a noble and commodious edifice, without the use of cut
stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice
wedged-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his
lintels, and flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill
and regard him as the paramount power. Now, the fragments
of stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to the edifice
built by him the same relation which the fluctuating variations
of organic beings bear to the varied and admirable structures
ultimately acquired by their modified descendants.

"Some authors have declared that natural selection ex-
plains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual
difference be made clear. If it were explained to a savage
utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had
been raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments
were used for the arches, flat stones for the roof, &c. ; and if
the use of each part and of the whole building were pointed
out, it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had
been made clear to him, because the precise cause of the shape
of each fragment could not, be told. But this is a nearly
parallel case with the objection that selection explains
nothing, because we know not the cause of each individual
difference in the structure of each being."

" The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our
precipice may be called accidental, but this is not strictly
correct ; for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of
events, all obeying natural laws. . . . But in regard to the

ASA GRAY. 117

use to which the fragments may be put, their shape may be
strictly said to be accidental. . . ."

In his article in the Nation (March 19th, 1868),
Asa Gray criticised the metaphor as follows :—

" But in Mr. Darwin's parallel, to meet the case of nature
according to his own view of it, not only the fragments of
rock (answering to variation) should fall, but the edifice
(answering to natural selection) should rise, irrespective of will
or choice ! "

This passage is quoted in the " Life and Letters "
(Vol. III., p. 84), and Francis Darwin makes the
convincing reply : —

" But my father's parallel demands that natural selection
shall be the architect, not the edifice—the question of design
only comes in with regard to the form of the building
materials."

Darwin's reply was contained in his letter to
Asa Gray dated May 8th, 1868 :—

"You give a good slap at my concluding metaphor": un-
doubtedly I ought to have brought in and contrasted natural
and artificial selection ; but it seemed so obvious to me that
natural selection depended on contingences even more complex
than those which must have determined the shape of each frag-
ment at the base of my precipice. What I wanted to show was
that, in reference to pre-ordainment, whatever holds good in
the formation of an English pouter-pigeon holds good in the
formation of a natural species of pigeon. I cannot see that
this is false. If the right variations occurred, and no others,
natural selection would be superfluous."

To this, Asa Gray replied in his letter of May
25th :—

118 CHARLES DARWIN.

" As to close of my article, to match, close of your book, —
you see plainly I Was put on the defence by your reference to
an old hazardous remark of mine. I found your stone-house
argument unanswerable in substance (for the notion of design
must after all rest mostly on faith, and on accumulation of
adaptations, &c.) ; so all I could do was to find a vulnerable
spot in the shaping of it, fire my little shot, and run away
in the smoke.

" Of course I understand your argument perfectly, and feel
the might of it."

From this last letter I think we may conclude
that Asa Gray's feelings on this subject rested, as
he says, "on faith," and that, intellectually, he saw
no way of meeting Darwin's arguments.

119

CHAPTER XVIII.

INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON HUXLEY.

IT is of the utmost interest to trace the influence
of Darwin upon Huxley, his great General in the
numerous controversial battles which had to be
fought before the new views were to secure a fair
hearing and, at length, complete success. Now that
we are quietly enjoying the fruit of his many vic-
tories, we are apt to forget how much we owe to
Huxley, not only for evolution, but for that perfect
freedom in the expression of thought and opinion
which we enjoy. For Huxley fought on wider issues
than those raised by evolution, wide as these are ; and
with a success so great that it is inconceivable that
any new and equally illuminating thought which the
future may hold in store for us, will meet with a
reception like that accorded to the "Origin of
Species."

At first sight it seems a simple matter to describe
the effect of the " Origin " upon Huxley, considering
that he, more than any other man, expounded it, and
defended it from the most weighty of the attacks
made upon it. Hence, it is only natural to believe,
as many have done, that he was in entire agreement
with the conclusions of the book as regards natural

120 CHARLES DARWIN.

selection as well as evolution. On the other hand,
the opinion hsfs often been expressed that Huxley,
although agreeing with the "Origin" for some
years after its first appearance, changed his mind
in later years, and no longer supported Darwin's
views.

I shall give reasons for rejecting both these
opinions about Huxley, although the first is far
nearer the truth than the second. The- latter is
clearly untenable, and was probably merely an in-
ference from the fact that after a time Huxley ceased
to enter into Darwinian controversies. But this was
because he had done his work with entire success,
and therefore turned his attention in other directions.
Whenever he was called on to write or speak about
Darwinism, as he was on two occasions within
a few months of his death, his writings and
speeches left no doubt about his thoughts on
the subject. Furthermore, in the Preface to
" Darwiniana," written in 1893, he expressly denied
that he had recanted or changed his opinions about
Darwin's views.

In order to appreciate the influence of Darwin
upon Huxley, we must find out the beliefs of the
latter upon the " species question " before the ap-
pearance of the " Origin." In his chapter " On the
Reception of the ' Origin of Species ' " (" Life and
Letters," Vol. II.) Huxley says that, before 1858, he
took up an agnostic position as regards evolution
u . . . upon two grounds : firstly, that up to that

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 121

time, the evidence in favour of transmutation was
wholly insufficient ; and, secondly, that no suggestion
respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed,
which had been made, was in any way adequate
to explain the phenomena." It is obvious that these
two grounds are entirely distinct, and that the logical
foundation of the first is far more secure than that of
the second.

The effect of the "Origin" was completely to
convince Huxley on the first ground: from that
time he never doubted the truth of evolution, how-
ever it may have been brought about. With regard
to the second ground, it is quite clear that Huxley
had a very high opinion of natural selection: he
thought it incomparably the best suggestion upon
the subject that had ever been made, and he firmly
believed that it accounted for something — that it may
even have taken a dominant part in bringing about
evolution. On the other hand, he never felt quite
confident about the entire sufficiency of the evidence
in its favour. It is probable that he was far more
interested in the establishment of evolution as a
fact than in natural selection as an explanation of
it. He saw the vast amount of research in all kinds
of new or almost neglected lines, which would be
directly inspired by evolution. And his own in-
vestigations in some of these lines soon afforded
some of the most weighty evidence in favour of the
doctrine. Natural selection had not the same per-
sonal interest for him ; no one has expounded it

122 CHARLES DARWIN.

better or defended it more vigorously and successfully,
but Huxley's own researches never lay in directions
which would have made them available as a test
of the theory. Of natural selection he might have
used the words of Mercutio — it may not be " so deep
as a well, nor so wide as a church door," to contain
the whole explanation of evolution, " but 'tis enough
'twill serve " ; it will, at any rate, prevent him from
feeling the second ground on which he had main-
tained an agnostic position.

I believe that he maintained these views with
inflexible consistency throughout his life, the only
indications of change being in the last year, when
the contrast between his certainty of evolution
and his uncertainty of natural selection, as ex-
pressed in the two speeches quoted on pp. 140, 141,
was, perhaps, more sharply marked than at any
other period.

It is now proposed to support this conclusion by
many extracts from Huxley's writings, as well as
from his speeches, which have been alluded to above.
The deep interest of the subject, and the wide dif-
ferences of opinion with regard to it, justify, and
indeed demand, copious quotations selected from
works and speeches, written and spoken at many
different times during the years between 1858 and
1894.

It may not be out of place to emphasise the fact
that the sole responsibility for the conclusions here
drawn rests with the author of this volume, and that

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 123

the evidence on which the conclusions rest is supplied
in full.

About a month before the "Origin" was published,
Darwin wrote to Professor Huxley asking for the
names of foreigners to whom to send his book.
This communication is of great interest as being the
earliest letter, accessible to the public, which he
wrote to Huxley. In it he says : " I shall be in-
tensely curious to hear what effect the book produces
on you"; but he evidently thought that Huxley would
disagree with much in it, and must have been sur-
prised as well as gratified at the way in which it
was received. In his chapter " On the Reception of
the ' Origin of Species ' " (" Life and Letters," Vol. II.),
Huxley writes : " My reflection, when I first made
myself master of the central idea of the ' Origin,'
was, ' How extremely stupid not to have thought
of that.' "

Huxley replied on November 23rd, 1859 — the day
before the publication of the " Origin " — saying that
he had finished the book on the previous day. His
letter was a complete acceptance of evolution as
apart from any theory which may account for it ;
and a thorough agreement with natural selection
as a "true cause for the production of species." At
no time in his life did he state how far he considered
natural selection to be a sufficient cause. He was
only "prepared to go to the stake, if requisite, in
support of" the chapters which marshal the evidence
for evolution (ix., and most parts of x., xi., and xii).

124 CHARLES DARWIN.

With regard to the earlier chapters, which pro-
pound the theory of natural selection, his exact
words are : —

" As to the first four chapters, I agree thoroughly and fully
with all the principles laid down in them. I think you have
demonstrated a true cause for the production of species, and
have thrown the onus probandi, that species did not arise in
the way you suppose, on your adversaries."

Darwin replied with much warmth, and expressed
himself as "Now contented and able to sing my
Nunc Dimittis"

In the Times of December 26th, 1859, appeared
a masterly article upon the " Origin," and, after a
time, it became known that Huxley was its author.
Volume II. of the " Life and Letters " explains the
circumstances under which the review was written.
The article is reprinted as the first essay ("The
Darwinian Hypothesis," I.) in " Darwiniana " (Vol.
II. of the "Collected Essays of Professor Huxley,"
London, 1893). The following quotation (pp. 19,
20) shows the attitude he took up with regard to
natural selection : —

" That this most ingenious hypothesis enables us to give a
reason for many apparent anomalies in the distribution of
living beings in time and space, and that it is not contradicted
tby tHe main phenomena of life and organisation appear to us
to be unquestionable ; and, so far, it must be admitted to have
an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it
is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or
falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the
enquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 125

state of mind which he calls " Thatige Skepsis " — active doubt.
It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in
doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief ; and we
commend this state of mind to students of species, with
respect to Mr. Darwin's or any other hypothesis as to their
origin. The combined investigations of another twenty years
may, perhaps, enable naturalists to say whether the modifying
causes and the selective power, which Mr. Darwin has satis-
factorily shewn to exist in Nature, are competent to produce
all the effects he ascribes to them ; or whether, on the other
hand, he has been led to over-estimate the value of the prin-
ciple of natural selection, as greatly as Lamarck over-estimated
his vera causa of modification by exercise."

Of all the statements about natural selection
made by Huxley, this one seems to me the nearest
to the spirit of the two speeches he made in 1894,
in which it became evident that the intervening
thirty-five years had not brought the increased
confidence he had hoped for. Furthermore, in the
Preface to "Darwiniana" (1893) he expressly stated
that he had not changed his mind as regards this
article and the next which will be considered (see
p. 137, where the passage is quoted).

In 1860 Huxley wrote the article on " The Origin
of Species " which appeared in the Westminster
Review for April, and is reprinted in "Darwiniana."
He here states the reasons for his doubts about
natural selection in considerable detail. At the
beginning of the essay (" Darwiniana," p. 23) he
asserts that —

"... all competent naturalists and physiologists, what-
ever their opinions as to the ultimate fate of the doctrines put

126 CHARLES DARWIN.

forth, acknowledge that the work in which they are embodied
is a solid contribution to knowledge and inaugurates a new
epoch in natural history."

Towards the end of the essay, after vindicating
the logical method followed by Darwin, he continues
(pp. 73-75) :-

"There is no fault to be found with Mr. Darwin's method,
then ; but it is another question whether he has fulfilled all
the conditions imposed by that method. Is it satisfactorily
proved, in fact, that species may be originated by selection 1
that there is such a thing as natural selection 1 that none of
the phoenomena exhibited by species are inconsistent with the
origin of species in this way? If these questions can be
answered in the affirmative, Mr. Darwin's view steps out of
the ranks of hypotheses into those of proved theories ; but,
so long as the evidence at present adduced falls short of
enforcing that affirmation, so long, to our minds, must the
new doctrine be content to remain among the former — an
extremely valuable, and in the highest degree probable,
doctrine, indeed the only extant hypothesis which is worth
anything in a scientific point of view ; but still a hypothesis,
and not yet the theory of species.

"After much consideration, and with assuredly no bias
against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as
the evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of
animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in
Nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial
or natural. Groups having the morphological character of
species, distinct and permanent races in fact, have been so
produced over and over again ; but there is no positive evi-
dence, at present, that any group of animals has, by variation
and selective breeding, given rise to another group which was
even in the least degree infertile with the first. Mr. Darwin
is perfectly aware of this weak point, and brings forward a
multitude of ingenious and important arguments to diminish
the force of the objection. We admit the value of these argu-
ments to their fullest extent ; nay, we will go so far as to

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 127

express our belief that experiments, conducted by a skilful
physiologist, would very probably obtain the desired pro-
duction of mutually more or less infertile breeds from a
common stock, in a comparatively few years ; but still, as the
case stands at present, this * little rift within the lute ' is not
to be disguised nor overlooked."

He concludes with a summary of the results of
his argument. The sentences which bear on the
present question are as follows (pp. 77, 78) : —

" Our object has been attained if we have given an
intelligible, however brief, account of the established facts
connected with species, and of the relation of the explanation
of those facts offered by Mr. Darwin to the theoretical views
held by his predecessors and his contemporaries, and, above
all, to the requirements of scientific logic. We have ventured
to point out that it does not, as yet, satisfy all those require-
ments ; but we do not hesitate to assert that it was superior to
any preceding or contemporary hypothesis, in the extent of
observational and experimental basis on which it rests, in its
rigorously scientific method, and in its power of explaining
biological phenomena, as was the hypothesis of Copernicus
to the speculations of Ptolemy. But the planetary orbits
turned out to be not quite circular after all, and, grand as was
the service Copernicus rendered to science, Kepler and Newton
had to come after him. What if the orbit of Darwinism
should be a little too circular? what if species should offer
residual phenomena, here and there, not explicable by natural
selection ? Twenty years hence naturalists may be in a
position to say whether this is, or is not, the case ; but in
either event they will owe the author of 'The Origin of
Species' an immense debt of gratitude. We should leave a
very wrong impression on the reader's mind if we permitted
him to suppose that the value of that work depends wholly on
the ultimate justification of the theoretical views which it
contains. On the contrary, if they were disproved to-morrow,
the book would still be the best of its kind — the most com-

CHARLES DARWIN.

pendious statements of well-sifted facts bearing on the
doctrine of species that has ever appeared."

It is clear that two very distinct points are urged
in this criticism of natural selection — (1) the difficulty
that selective methods applied by man have not as
yet produced all the characteristics of true species;
(2) supposing the latter difficulty to be surmounted
or sufficiently explained, the uncertainty as to how
much or how little of the process of evolution has
been due to natural selection.

Later in the same year Darwin seems to have
been a little disappointed that Huxley's confidence
did not increase. Thus, he wrote on December 2nd,
1860 :—

"I entirely agree with you that the difficulties on my
notions are terrific ; yet having seen what all the Reviews have
said against me, I have far more confidence in the general
truth of the doctrine than I formerly had. Another thing
gives me confidence — viz. that some who went half an inch
with me now go further, and some who were bitterly opposed
are now less bitterly opposed. And this makes me feel a little
disappointed that you are not inclined to think the general
view in some slight degree more probable than you did at
first. This I consider rather ominous. Otherwise I should be
more contented with your degree of belief. I can pretty
plainly see that if my view is ever to be generally adopted, it
Avill be by young men growing up ami replacing the old
workers, and then young ones finding that they can group
facts and search out new lines of investigation better on the
notion of descent than on that of creation."

In 1863 Huxley delivered a course of lectures
to working men on " The Causes of the Phenomena

HUXLEY AND NATURAL

of Organic Nature " ; here, too, he expressed his
opinions about natural selection with great clearness
and force. These lectures are reprinted as the
concluding part of " Darwiniana," and the references
are to the pages of that volume of his collected
essays.

On page 464 we read —

" Here are the phenomena of Hybridism staring you in the
face, and you cannot say, ' I can, by selective modification,
produce these same results.' Now, it is admitted on all hands,
at present, so far as experiments have gone, it has not been
found possible to produce this complete physiological diver-
gence by selective breeding. ... If we were shewn that
this must be the necessary and inevitable results of all ex-
periments, I hold that Mr. Darwin's hypothesis would be
utterly shattered."

He then goes on to show that this is very far from
proved, and concludes (page 466)—

"that though Mr. Darwin's hypothesis does not completely
extricate us from this difficulty at present, we have not the
least right to say it will not do so."

A passage on page 467 shows that Huxley placed
natural selection infinitely higher than any other
attempt to account for evolution, and indeed that
he regarded all other attempts with scorn.

" I really believe that the alternative is either Darwinism
or nothing, for I do not know of any rational conception or
theory of the Organic universe which has any scientific
position at all beside Mr. Darwin's. . . . Whatever may
be the objections to his views, certainly all other theories are
absolutely out of court."
i

130 CHARLES DARWIN.

On page 468 he continues —

" ,But you must recollect that when I say I think it is either
Mr. Darwin's hypothesis or nothing ; that either we must take
his view, or look upon the whole of organic nature as an enigma,
the meaning of which is wholely hidden from us ; you must
understand that I mean that I accept ' it provisionally, in
exactly the same way as I accept any other hypothesis."

He concludes the lectures and the volume in
which they are now reproduced by the following
eloquent testimony to the unique value of the
" Origin of Species " : —

" I believe that if you strip it of its theoretical part it still
remains one of the greatest encyclopaedias of biological doctrine
that any one man ever brought forth, and I believe that, if you
take it as the embodiment of an hypothesis, it is destined to
be the guide of biological and psychological speculation for the
next three or four generations."

The next essay from which I quote was written
in 1871. At the beginning of " Mr. Darwin's Critics "
(" Darwiniana," p. 120) he uses words which, if they
stood alone, might be interpreted as an indication
of a stronger conviction.

" Whatever may be thought or said about Mr. Darwin's
doctrines, or the manner in which he has propounded them,
this much is certain, that, in a dozen years, the 'Origin of
Species ' has worked as complete a revolution in biological
science as the ' Principia ' did in astronomy — and it has done
so, because, in the words of Helmholtz, it contains an 'essen-
tially new creative thought.' "

This last quotation, and the following one, from
"Evolution in Biology," written in 1878, are, 1 think,

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 131

among the strongest utterances in favour of natural
selection to be found in the Collected Essays. At
the conclusion of the above-named essay (I. c., p. 223)
he states that it was clearly seen that —

" if the explanation would apply to species, it would not only
solve the problem of their evolution, but that it would account
for the facts of teleology, as well as for those of morphology ;

5)

" How far ' natural selection ' suffices for the production of
species remains to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the
whole cause, it is a very important factor in that operation ;
and that it must play a great part in the sorting out of
varieties into those which are transitory and those which are
permanent."

The seventh essay, " The Coming of Age of ' The
Origin of Species/ " was written in 1880. His com-
plete confidence in evolution, as shown in this essay,
may be contrasted with his cautious statements about
natural selection. He boldly affirms evolution to be
the fundamental doctrine of the " Origin of Species,"
while natural selection is, I believe, neither men-
tioned nor even alluded to. On this great occasion
he thus emphasised the immense debt we owe to
Darwin in that he was the first to produce adequate
evidence in favour of the ancient doctrine of
evolution, a benefit quite distinct from that which
he conferred in the theory of natural selection
(see pp. 100-102).

The following are among the most confident
statements about evolution to be found in this
essay. Speaking of the " Origin," he says (p. 229) : —

132 CHARLES DARWIN.

"... the general doctrine of evolution, to one side of which
it gives expression, obtains, in the phenomena of biology, a
firm base of operations whence it may conduct its conquest of
the whole realm of nature."

And again, on page 332 : —

" The fundamental doctrine of the * Origin of Species,' as
of all forms of the theory of evolution applied to biology, is
' that the innumerable species, genera, and families of organic
beings with which the world is peopled have all descended,
each within its own class or group, from common parents, and
have all been modified in the course of descent.' "

Furthermore, on page 242 we read :—

" I venture to repeat what I have said before, that so far
as the animal world is concerned, evolution is no longer a
speculation, but a statement of historical fact. It takes its
place alongside of those accepted truths which must be
reckoned with by philosophers of all schools."

And on the same page he quotes with approval
the statement by M. Filhol of the results to which
he had been led by his palseontological investiga-
tions : —

" Under the influence of natural conditions of which we
have no exact knowledge, though traces of them are dis-
coverable, species have been modified in a thousand ways :
species have arisen which, becoming fixed, have thus produced
a corresponding number of secondary species."

Similarly, in the Obituary notice in Nature (1882),
Huxley speaks of the secure position in which
Darwin had placed the doctrine of evolution as his
great achievement. The following eloquent passage
occurs on page 247 of " Darwiniana " :—

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 133

"None have fought better, and none have been more
fortunate, than Charles Darwin. He found a great truth
trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and ridiculed by all the
world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his own
efforts, irrefragibly established in science, . . .

In the impressive speech in which Huxley handed
over the statue of Darwin to the Prince of Wales, as
representative of the Trustees of the British Museum,
on June 9th, 1885 (" Darwiniana," p. 248), the refer-
ences to Darwin are most consistent with the view
that the support to evolution was held by the speaker
to be the great work of his life. Natural selection
is not mentioned.

The next publication on this subject by Huxley
is the celebrated chapter " On the .Reception of the
' Origin of Species/ " in the second volume of the
great " Life and Letters." In this chapter he speaks
rather more confidently about natural selection than
in some of the earlier essays and in the later
speeches : —

" The reality and the importance of the natural processes
on which Darwin founds his deductions are no more doubted
than those of growth and multiplication ; and, whether the
full potency attributed to them is admitted or not, no one
doubts their vast and far-reaching significance."

But of evolution he speaks far more strongly : — -

" To any one who studies the signs of the times, the
emergence of the philosophy of Evolution, [" bound hand and
foot and cast into utter darkness during the millennium of
theological scholasticism "] in the attitude of claimant to the

134 CHARLES DARWIN.

throne of the world of thought, from the limbo of hated and,
as many hoped, forgotten things, is the most portentous event
of the nineteenth century."

And for this he gives Darwin the credit.

Later on he indicates the sense in which his keen
appreciation of natural selection is to be understood.
Thus, such strong statements as —

"... the publication of the Darwin and Wallace papers
in 1858, and still more that of the ' Origin ' in 1859, had the
effect ... of the flash of light, which to a man who has
lost himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which,
whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his

and —

" The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of
adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough ; but none of
us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species
problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dis-
pelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the ' Origin '
guided the benighted,"

if they stood alone, might naturally be interpreted
as an unqualified testimony to the permanent truth
of natural selection. But this interpretation is ex-
pressly excluded : —

" Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of
evolution, as applied to the organic world, took in Darwin's
hands, would prove to be final or not, was, to me, a matter
of indifference. In my earliest criticisms of the ' Origin '
I ventured to point that its logical foundation was insecure
.. . . j and that insecurity remains."

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 135

Its value for Huxley was that it was " incomparably
more probable than the creation hypothesis " ; that
it was " a hypothesis respecting the origin of known
organic forms, which assumed the operation of no
causes but such as could be proved to be actually at
work " ; that it provided " clear and definite con-
ceptions which could be brought face to face with
facts and have their validity tested " ; that it freed
us "for ever from the dilemma — refuse to accept
the creation hypothesis, and what have you to pro-
pose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner ? "
Indeed, the hypothesis did away with this dilemma,
even if it were itself to disappear; for "if we had
none of us been able to discern the paramount
significance of some of the most patent and notorious
of natural facts, until they were, so to speak, thrust
under our noses, what force remained in the dilemma
— creation or nothing? It was obvious that, here-
after, the probability would be immensely greater,
that the links of natural causation were hidden from
our purblind eyes, than that natural causation should
be incompetent to produce all the phenomena
of nature."

Therefore, " the only rational course for those who
had no other object than the attainment of truth,
was to accept ' Darwinism ' as a working hypothesis,
and see what could be made of it." Furthermore,
" Whatever may be the ultimate fate of the particular
theory put forth by Darwin, ... all the ingenuity
and all the learning of hostile critics has not enabled

136 CHARLES DARWIN.

them to adduce a solitary fact, of which it can
be said, this is irreconcilable with the Darwinian
theory."

Taking this argument as a whole, it seems to me
to amount to the words of Mercutio quoted at the
beginning of this chapter.

In the following year (1888) Huxley wrote the
Obituary Notice of Darwin for the Proceedings of
the Royal Society : it is reprinted in " Darwiniana "
(pp. 253 et seq.). In this admirable essay the author
recognises that Darwin evidently accepted evolution
before he could offer any explanation of the motive
cause by which that process took place. The theory
of descent with modification had often been thought
of before, " but in the eyes of the naturalist of the
' Beagle ' (and, probably, in those of most sober
thinkers), the advocates of transmutation had done
the doctrine they expounded more harm than good."
Huxley speaks of the " Origin " as " one of the
hardest books to master," in this agreeing with
Hooker (see p. 111).

In this essay Huxley gives a clear and excellent
statement of natural selection, prefaced by these
words (p. 287) :—

"Although, then, the present occasion is not suitable for
any detailed criticism of the theory, or of the objections which
have been brought against it, it may not be out of place to
endeavour to separate the substance of the theory from its
accidents ; and to shew that a variety not only of hostile
comments, but of friendly would-be improvements, lose their
raison d'etre to the careful student."

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 137

Then follows a brief but epigrammatic description,
such as only Huxley could have written, of the
theory, and some of the chief arguments which have
revolved round it. Occasionally he speaks as if he
were stating his own opinion as well as Darwin's,
but throughout .it seems to me that his object is
not to give his own views but to write a fair and
clear account of Darwin's theory, and to defend
it from a number of criticisms and modifications
which have been, from time to time, brought
forward.

" Darwiniana " was published in 1893, and this
is the date of the Preface, in which Huxley speaks
of—

"... the ancient doctrine of Evolution, rehabilitated and
placed upon a sound scientific foundation, since, and in conse-
quence of, the publication of the ' Origin of Species . . .'"

He thinks that readers will admit that in the
first two essays (see pages 124-128 of the present
volume)—

"... my zeal to secure fair play for Mr. Darwin, did
riot drive me into the position of a mere advocate ; and that,
while doing justice to the greatness of the argument, 1 did not
fail to indicate its weak points. I have never seen any reason
for departing from the position which I took up in these two
essays ; and the assertion which I sometimes meet with nowa-
days, that I have ' recanted ' or changed my opinions about
Mr. Darwin's views, is quite unintelligible to me."

"As 1 have said in the seventh essay, [see pages 131, 132
of the present volume] the fact of evolution is to my mind

138 CHARLES DARWIN.

sufficiently evidenced by paleontology ; and I remain of the
opinion expressed in the second, that until selective breeding
is definitely proved to give rise to varieties infertile with one
another, the logical foundation of the theory of natural
selection is incomplete."

It is therefore clear, as I have before stated,
that Huxley, in 1893, re-stated his criticisms and
qualifications of thirty years before, and expressed
his conviction anew of the validity of the objections
which he then raised against a full and complete
acceptance of natural selection.

We now come to the last and most significant
of all Huxley's utterances on evolution and natural
selection, made on two great occasions in the last
year of his life. Lord Salisbury, in his eloquent
and interesting Presidential Address to the British
Association at Oxford (August 8th, 1894), had said
of Darwin : —

" He has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the doctrine of the
immutability of species. . . . Few now are found to doubt
that animals separated by differences far exceeding those that
distinguish what we know as species have yet descended from
common ancestors."

While thus completely admitting evolution in the
organic world, Lord Salisbury attacked natural
selection on two grounds — first, on the insufficiency
of the time allowed by physicists for a process which
is, of necessity, extremely slow in its operation ;
secondly, on the ground that " we cannot demonstrate
the process of natural selection in detail ; we cannot

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 139

even, with more or less ease, imagine it." And his
main objection under this head was the supposed diffi-
culty in securing the union of successful variations.
The actual words have been already quoted on page
83, where it was shown that the criticism does
not apply to natural selection, but to a theory mis-
taken ' by the speaker for that of Darwin. Curiously
enough, the first objection of the insufficiency of
time was the indirect cause of a subsequent tren-
chant criticism by Professor Perry of the line of
mathematical reasoning on which the limit had
been fixed.

Huxley was called on to second the vote of
thanks, and his speech had evidently been considered
with the greatest care. I quote the passages which
bear on evolution and natural selection from the
Times of August 9th, 1894, in which a verbatim
report is furnished : —

"... As one of those persons who for many years past
had made a pretty free use of the comfortable word ' evolution,'
let him remind them that 34 years ago a considerable dis-
cussion, to which the President had referred, took place in
one of their sectional meetings upon what people frequently
called the ' Darwinism question,' but which on that occasion
was not the Darwinism question, but the very much deeper
question which lay beneath the Darwinism question — he
meant the question of evolution. . . . The two doctrines,
the two main points, for which these men [Sir John Lubbock,
Sir J. Hooker, and the speaker] fought were that species were
mutable, and that the great variety of animal forms had pro-
ceeded from gradual and natural modification of the com-
paratively few primitive forms "

140 CHARLES DARWIN.

After alluding to the revolution in thought which
had taken place in thirty-four years, he said : —

" As he noted in ttie presidential address to which they had
just listened with such well-deserved interest, he found it stated
on that which was then and at this time the highest authority
for them, that as a matter of fact the doctrine of the immuta-
bility of species was disposed of and gone. He found that
few were now found to doubt that animals separated by
differences far exceeding those which they knew as species
were yet descended from a common ancestry. Those were
their propositions ; those were the fundamental principles of
the doctrine of evolution. Darwinism was not evolution, nor
Spencerism, nor Haeckelism, nor Weismannism, but all these
were built on the fundamental doctrine which was evolution,
which they maintained so many years, and which was that
upon which their President had put the seal of his authority
that evening "

Huxley thus hailed the statements of the Presi-
dent in favour of evolution, while the attacks on
natural selection he merely met by saying that the
address would have made a good subject for dis-
cussion in one of the sections, and by insisting with
impressive solemnity that evolution was a very
different thing from natural selection, thereby im-
plying that the former would be unaffected by the
fate of the latter.

The second occasion was between three and four
months later, when Huxley spoke at the Anniversary
Dinner of the Royal Society, November 30th, 1894,
after having been awarded the Darwin Medal at the
afternoon meeting. I quote his words from the
verbatim report of the Times for December 1st : —

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 141

"... I am as much convinced now as I was 34 years
ago that the theory propounded by Mr. Darwin, I mean
that which he propounded — not that which has been reported
to be his by too many ill-instructed, both friends and foes —
has never yet been shewn to be inconsistent with any positive
observations, and if I may use a phrase which I know has been
objected to and which I use in a totally different sense from
that in which it was first proposed by its first propounder, I
do believe that on all grounds of pure science it 'holds the
field,' as the only hypothesis at present before us which has a
sound scientific foundation. . . . I am sincerely of opinion
that the views which were propounded by Mr. Darwin 34
years ago may be understood herea-fter as constituting an
epoch in the intellectual history of the human race. They
will modify the whole system of our thought and opinion, our
most intimate convictions. But I do not know, I do not think
anybody knows, whether the particular views which he held
will be hereafter fortified by the experience of the ages which
come after us ; ... whether the particular form in which
he has put them before us (the Darwinian doctrines) may be
such as is finally destined to survive or not is more, I venture
to think, than anybody is capable at this present moment of
saying."

It is unnecessary to say anything about this
passage, which fitly sums up and sets the seal on
the long series of quotations I have felt obliged
to make.

It may not be out of place, however, to state in
a few words why many naturalists, including the
present writer, are not inclined to accept the ex-
tremely cautious and guarded language of one upon
whom, with regard to so many other subjects, they
have ever looked as their teacher and guide. Con-
cerning the verification of a hypothesis, Huxley said

142 CHARLES DARWIN.

in his lectures to working men (" Darwiniana," pages
367, 368)—

. . . that thg more extensive verifications are, — that the
more frequently experiments have been made, and results of
the same kind arrived at, — that the more varied the conditions
under which the same results are attained, the more certain is
the ultimate conclusion . . . ."

And again —

" In scientific enquiry it becomes a matter of duty to expose
a supposed law to every possible kind of verification, and to
take care, moreover, that this is done intentionally, and not
left to a mere accident . . . ."

It may well be that the length of time required
before an artificially-selected race will exhibit, when
interbred with the parent species, phenomena of
hybridism similar to those which are witnessed when
distinct natural species are interbred — will be fatal
to the production of this important line of evidence.
But there is nothing to hinder us from holding the
reasonable belief that such evidence might be ob-
tained if we had command of the necessary conditions;
and in the meantime other evidence of the most
satisfactory kind is accumulating, and on a vast scale.
Whenever a naturalist approaches a problem in the
light of the theory of natural selection, and is able,
by its aid, to predict a conclusion which subsequent
investigation proves to be correct, he is helping in
the production of evidence in favour of the theory.
When a naturalist has found the formula "if natural
selection be true so-and-so ought to happen" the

HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 143

safest of all guides into the unknown, when it has
brought him success many times and in very different
directions, when he knows that many other workers
in other fields of biological inquiry have had a simi-
larly happy experience, he gradually comes to feel a
profound confidence in the permanent truth and the
far-reaching importance of the great theory which has
served him so well.

144

CHAPTER XIX.

THE DIFFICULTY WITH WHICH THE "ORIGIN" WAS
UNDERSTOOD.

EVEN earlier than Huxley, H. C. Watson wrote
warmly accepting natural selection. In his letter,
which is dated November 21st, 1859, he said: —

"Your leading idea will surely become recognised as an
established truth in science — i.e. 'Natural Selection.' It has
the characteristics of all great natural truths, clarifying what
was obscure, simplifying what was intricate, adding greatly to
previous knowledge. You are the greatest revolutionist in
natural history of this century, if not of all centuries."

For some years to come, however, such views as
these were the exception, as will soon be shown.

The Duke of Argyll has argued (Nineteenth
Century, December, 1887) that the success of
"Natural Selection" has followed from the con-
vincing character of the words used, scientific men
("the populace of science" he calls them) being
so easily led by the power of loose analogies that
they have been convinced of the truth of the
principle because they are familiar with Nature on
the one hand, and selection as a process on the other !

As I am not aware that this preposterous sugges-
tion has ever been publicly disproved, and since

MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE THEORY. 145

therefore some readers of the journal in question
may have been misled by it, I have collected much
evidence, which proves that the principle of natural
selection was only absorbed with the very greatest
difficulty, and that the words used in describing it for
a long time entirely failed to inform even eminent
scientific men of the essential characteristics of the
theory itself, and certainly failed most signally to
convince them. Conviction came very gradually as
the theory was slowly understood and was seen to
offer an intelligible explanation of an immense and
ever-increasing number of facts.

I will now bring together quotatffons from Darwin's
letters in 1859 and 1860, showing how soon he came
to realise the difficulty with which natural selection
was understood, and to feel that he might have been
more successful with some other title.

In 1859 he wrote to Dr. W. B. Carpenter— " I
have found the most extraordinary difficulty in
making even able men understand at what I was
driving." The remaining quotations are all taken
from letters written in 1860. By the middle of this
year, when he was feeling oppressed by hostile reviews
and unfair and ignorant criticisms (" I am getting
wearied at the storm of hostile reviews, and hardly
any useful "), he often alludes to the failure of oppo-
nents to understand his theory. Thus, in a letter to
Hooker (June 5th), he says : —

"This review, however, and Harvey's letter have convinced
me that I must be a very bad explainer. Neither really
j

146 CHARLES DARWIN.

understand what I mean by Natural Selection I hope

to God you will be more successful than I have been in
making people understand your meaning."

He says almost the same thing in a letter to Lyell
(June 6th) : —

". . . . I am beginning to despair of ever making the

majority understand my notions I must be a very bad

explainer. I hope to Heaven that you will succeed better.
Several reviews and several letters have shown me too clearly
how little I am understood. I suppose 'Natural Selection'
was a bad term ;....! can only hope by reiterated explana-
tions finally to make the matter clearer."

Writing to Asa Gray, he says : —

". . . . I have had a letter of fourteen folio pages from
Harvey against my book, with some ingenious and new
remarks ; but it is an extraordinary fact that he does not
understand at all what I mean by Natural Selection."

Later on, he again wrote to Lyell : —

" Talking of ' natural selection ' ; if I had to commence de
novo, I would have used ' natural preservation.' For I find
men like Harvey of Dublin cannot understand me, though he
has read the book twice. Dr. Gray of the British Museum
remarked to me that, ' selection was obviously impossible with
plants ! No one could tell him how it could be possible ! '
And he may now add that the author did not attempt it to
him ! "

And still later he wrote- asking Ly ell's advice as to
additions to a new edition of the " Origin," saying : —
" I would also put a note to ' Natural Selection/
and show how variously it has been misunderstood."
This note is to be found on page 63 of the sixth

MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE THEORY. 147

edition. In it he tells us that some writers have " even
imagined that natural selection induces variability,"
instead of merely preserving it ; others that natural
selection " implies conscious choice in the animals
which become modified " ; others that it is set up
" as an active power or Deity." In writing (December)
to Murray about a new edition of the " Origin," he
alludes to the "many corrections, or rather additions,
which I have made in hopes of making my many
rather stupid reviewers at least understand what
is meant."

He seems to have retained a very vivid recol-
lection of the difficulty with which his theory was
understood at first; thus he tells us in his
" Autobiography " : —

" I tried once or twice to explain to able men what I meant
by Natural Selection, but signally failed."

Why the term " natural selection " was chosen by
Darwin is very clearly shown in the three following
quotations from letters to distinguished scientific men,
which were probably written in answer to attacks or
criticisms on this very point.

He writes to Lyell in 1859, "Why I like the
term is that it is constantly used in all works on
breeding."

Writing to H. G. Bronn in 1860, he explains his
motives with great clearness and force : —

"Several scientific men have thought the term 'Natural
Selection ' good, because its meaning is not obvious, and each

148 CHARLES DARWIN.

man could not put on it his own interpretation, and because it
at once connects variation under domestication and nature. . . .
Man has altered, and thus improved the English race-horse by
selecting successive fleeter individuals ; and I believe, owing to
the struggle for exTstence, that similar slight variations in a
wild horse, if advantageous to it, would be selected or preserved
by nature ; hence Natural Selection."

In 1866 he wrote to Wallace, comparing the term
with that which we owe to Herbert Spencer : —

"I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of
H. Spencer's excellent expression of ' the survival of the fittest.'
This however had not occurred to me till reading your letter.
It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be
used as a substantive governing a verb ; and that it is a real
objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words,
natural selection. I formerly thought, probably in an exagger-
ated degree, that it was a great advantage to bring into con-
nection natural and artificial selection ; this indeed led me
to use a term in common, and I still think it some advan-
tage. . . . The term Natural Selection has now been so
largely used abroad and at home, that I doubt whether it could
be given up, and with all its faults I should be sorry to see the
attempt made. Whether it will be rejected must now depend
' on the survival of the fittest.' As in time the term must grow
intelligible the objections to its use will grow weaker and
weaker. I doubt whether the use of any term would have
made the subject intelligible to some minds, clear as it is to
others ; for do we not see even to the present day Malthus on
Population absurdly misunderstood ? This reflection about
Malthus has often comforted me when I have been vexed at
the mis-statement of my own views."

A large number of critics not only failed to under-
stand natural selection, but they asserted that it was
precisely the same theory as that advanced by
Lamarck or one of the other writers on evolution

MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE THEORY. 140

before Darwin. This seems almost incredible to us at
the present day, when the biological world is divided
into two sections on the very subject, and when it is
generally recognised that Lamarck's theory would be,
if it were proved to be sound, a formidable rival to
natural selection as a motive cause of evolution. But
the following quotations — a few among many — leave
no doubt whatever upon the subject.

Evidence on this point reached Darwin almost
immediately after the appearance of the "Origin."
Thus he writes to Hooker on December 14th, 1859 : —

" Old J. E. Gray, at the British Museum, attacked me in
fine style : ' You have just reproduced Lamarck's doctrine, and
nothing else, and here Lyell and others have been attacking
him for twenty years, and because you . . . say the very same
thing, they are all coming round ; it is the most ridiculous in-
consistency,' &c. &c."

In the following year, Wilberforce, Bishop of
Oxford, writing in the Quarterly Review for July,
1860, appeals to Lyell,

" in order that with his help this flimsy speculation may be as
completely put down as was what in spite of all denials we
must venture to call its twin though less-instructed brother,
the ' Vestiges of Creation.' "

Again, Dr. Bree, in " Species not Transmutable,"

says :

" The only real difference between Mr. Darwin and his two
predecessors, [Lamarck and the "Vestiges"] is this :— that
while the latter have each given a mode by which they
conceive the great changes they believe in have been brought
about, Mr. Darwin does no such thing."

150 CHARLES DARWIN.

One of the most interesting of the countless
examples of misunderstanding is contained in n
recently published letter from W. S. Macleay to Robert
Lowe.* This letter was written from Elizabeth Bay,
and is dated May, 1860, evidently just after the first
edition of the " Origin," a copy of which had been sent
by Robert Lowe, had been read by Macleay.

"Again if this primordial cell had a Creator, as Darwin
seems to admit, I do not see what we gain by denying the
Creator, as Darwin does, all management of it after its creation.
Lamarck was more logical in supposing it to have existed of
itself from all eternity — indeed this is the principal difference
that I see between this theory of Darwin's and that of
Lamarck, who propounded everything essential in the former
theory, in a work now rather rare— his ' Philosophic Zoologique.'
But you may see an abridgment of it in so common a book as
his ' Histoire Nat. des Animaux Vertebres,' vol. i., pp. 188, et
seq.— Edit. 1818, where the examples given of natural selection
are the gasteropod molluscs. . . . Natural selection (some-
times called 'struggles' by Darwin) is identical with the
'Besoins des Choses' of Lamarck, who, by means of his
hypothesis, for instance, assigns the constant stretching of the
neck to reach the acacia leaves as the cause of the extreme
length of it in the giraffe ; much in the same way the black
bear, according to Darwin, became a whale, which I believe as
little as his other assertion that our progenitors anciently had
gills — only they had dropped off by want of use in the course
of myriads of generations."

I had long been anxious to possess a copy of
the first edition of the "Origin," and was fortunate
enough to corne across one about the time when
Macleay's letter was pointed out to me by my wife.

* " Life of Lord Sherbrooke," Vol. II. (pp. 205-206), Longmans
& Co. London, 1893.

MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE THEORY. 151

I opened the title-page, and found upon it the signa-
ture " W. S. Macleay " ; it must have been the very
volume given him by Robert Lowe, which Macleay
had read and believed he had been fairly criticising.
Out of Macleay's volume, therefore, I quote the
sentences he referred to in his letter.

Darwin's real statement about the black bear
which " became a whale " is to be found on page 184 : —

"In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne
swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching,
like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case
as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better
adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I
can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by
natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure
and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature
was produced as monstrous as a whale."

The statement about the gills which " dropped off
by want of use " becomes in the original (p. 191) : —

"In the higher vertebrata the branchiae have wholly
disappeared — the slits on the sides of the neck and the loop-
like course of the arteries still marking in the embryo their
former position."

Although the hypothetical case of the black
bear — carefully guarded as it is — does not now appear
to us at all extravagant (indeed, in the cleft cheeks
of the goat-sucker we have a precisely analogous case),
Darwin seems to have thought it unsuitable, probably
because it became an easy butt for ignorant ridicule.
We find accordingly that in the second and all sub-
sequent editions everything after the word " water " is

152 CHARLES DARWIN.

omitted, while " almost " is inserted before " like a
whale." He was alluding to this passage when he
wrote to Lyell (December 22nd, 1859): "Thanks
about ' Bears/ a Vord of ill-omen to me." Further-
more, Andrew Murray * says, concerning the sen-
tences as they stand in the first edition : —

" In quoting this, I do not at all mean to give it as a fair
illustration of Mr. Darwin's views. I only refer to it as
indicating the extent to which he is prepared to go. The
example here given I look upon (as I have reason to know
that Mr. Darwin himself does) merely as an extreme and
somewhat extravagant illustration, imagined expressly to show
in a forcible way how 'natural selection' would operate
in making a mouth bigger and bigger, because more
advantageous."

* Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., Jan. 16th, 1860.

153

CHAPTER XX.

THE DIFFICULTY WITH WHICH THE " ORIGIN " WAS

UNDERSTOOD (continued) — VIEWS ON SPONTANEOUS

GENERATION.

THE history of opinion on evolution and natural
selection, in the years which followed the publication
of the "Origin/' can be traced in the titles of the
papers and subjects of discussion at successive
meetings of the British Association. In the Presi-
dential Address delivered by Professor Newton to
the Biological Section of the Manchester meeting in
1887, there is a most interesting account of the
struggles which took place: —

" The ever-memorable meeting ... at Oxford in the summer
of 1860 saw the first open conflict between the professors of
the new faith and the adherents of the old one. Far be it
from me to blame those among the latter who honestly stuck
to the creed in which they had educated themselves ; but my
admiration is for the few dauntless men who, without flinch-
ing from the unpopularity of their cause, flung themselves in
the way of obloquy, and impetuously assaulted the ancient
citadel in which the sanctity of ' species ' was enshrined
and worshipped as a palladium. However strongly I myself
sympathised with them, I cannot fairly state that the conflict
on this occasion was otherwise than a drawn battle ; and thus
matters stood when in the following year the Association met
in this city [Manchester]. That, as I have already said, was a
time of 'slack water.' But though the ancient beliefs were

154 CHARLES DARWIN.

not much troubled, it was for the last time that they could
be said to prevail ; and thus I look upon our meeting in
Manchester 1861 as a crisis in the history of biology. All
the same, the ancient beliefs were not allowed to pass wholly
unchallenged ; and*one thing is especially to be marked — they
were challenged by one who was no naturalist at all, by one
who was a severe thinker no Jess than an active worker ; one
who was generally right in his logic, and never wrong in his
instinct ; one who, though a politician, was invariably an
honest man — I mean the late Professor Fawcett. On this
occasion he brought the clearness of his mental vision to bear
upon Mr. Darwin's theory, with the result that Mr. Darwin's
method of investigation was shewn to be strictly in accordance
with the rules of deductive philosophy, and to throw light
where all was dark before."

Professor Newton specially alluded to this in-
teresting case of Professor Fawcett as illustrating his
conviction that the theory of natural selection —

"did not, except in one small point, require a naturalist to
think it out and establish its truth. . . . But in order to see
the effect of this principle upon organic life the knowledge —
the peculiar knowledge — of the naturalist was required. This
was the knowledge of those slight variations which are found
in all groups of animals and plants. . . . Herein lay the
triumph of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace. That triumph,
however, was not celebrated at Manchester. The question
was of such magnitude as to need another year's incubation,
and the crucial struggle came a twelvemonth later when the
Association met at Cambridge. The victory of the new
doctrine was then declared in a way that none could doubt. I
have no inclination to join in the pursuit of the fugitives."

There is reason to believe that Professor Newton's
impressions of the result of the celebrated meeting
of the British Association at Oxford in 1860 are
more accurate than those of the eyewitness quoted

OPPOSITION. 155

in the " Life and Letters." The latter has pictured
a brilliant triumph for Huxley in the renowned duel
with the Bishop of Oxford. But I have been told
by more than one of the audience that Huxley was
really too angry to speak effectively, nor is this to
be wondered at, considering the extreme provocation.
Mr. William Sidgwick, who was present and sympa-
thised warmly with Huxley, has told me that this
was his opinion. I have heard the same from the
Rev. W. Tuckwell, who also quoted a remark of
the late Professor Rolleston tending in the same
direction. Mr. Tuckwell said that it was clear that
the audience as a whole was not carried away by
Huxley's speech, but, on the contrary, was obviously
shocked at it ; and he contrasted that occasion with
another at which he was also present, in the North,
several years later, when Huxley replied to an
opponent who, like the bishop, appealed to the
theological prejudices of his hearers. But by that
time the new teachings had been absorbed, and
Huxley gained a signal triumph.

It must not be supposed that Darwin was by any
means indifferent to the attacks on his views. On
the contrary, his sensitive nature was greatly de-
pressed by the violent and often most unfair
criticisms to which he was subjected, although
beneath this evident disturbance lay the firm con-
viction that he had seen the truth, and that the
truth would in the end be seen by others.

After the great fight with the bishop at the

156 CHARLES DARWIN.

British Association at Oxford, he wrote to Hooker
(July 2nd, 1860) :-

" I have read Jately so many hostile views, that I was
beginning to think that perhaps I was wholly in the wrong,

and that was right when he said the whole subject would

be forgotten in ten years ; but now that I hear that you and
Huxley will fight publicly (which I am sure I never could
do), I fully believe that our cause will, in the long-run,
prevail."

Looking at the history of opinion on this subject,
the slowness with which the new ideas were absorbed
appears remarkable. Even so able a man as the late
Professor Rolleston wrote in 1870 (" Forms of Animal
Life," Introduction, p. xxv., First Edition) the
following carefully guarded sentences, which, it is to
be noted, deal with evolution rather than natural
selection. Speaking of " the theory of evolution with
which Mr. Darwin's name is connected," Rolleston
says : —

" Many of the peculiarities which attach to biological classi-
fications would thus receive a reasonable explanation ; but
where verification is, ex hypothesi, impossible, such a theory
cannot be held to be advanced out of the region of probability.
The acceptance or rejection of the general theory will depend,
as does the acceptance or rejection of other views supported
merely by probable evidence, upon the particular constitution
of each individual mind to which it is presented ! "

It was too much to expect that many of the
older scientific men would retain sufficient intellectual
flexibility to be able to recognise, as Lyell had, that
the facts of nature were explained and predicted
better by the new views than by those in which

OPPOSITION. 157

they had grown up. Darwin thoroughly understood
this, and, writing to his friends, maintained .that the
fate of his views was in the hands of the younger
men.

A grand yet simple conception like that of
natural selection, explaining and connecting together
innumerable facts which people had previously
explained differently, or had become accustomed to
regard as inexplicable, must always remain as a
stumbling-block to the majority of those who have
reached or passed middle life before its first appear-
ance.

Hardly anything is more characteristic of Darwin
than the tone with which he wrote to acknowledged
opponents. Thus his letters to L. Agassiz (1868),
Quatrefages (1869 or 1870), and Fabre (1880), are
models of the way in which a correspondence which
would present peculiar difficulties to most people
may be conducted. In these letters there is not the
least attempt to slur over or minimise the points of
wide difference ; on the contrary, they are most
candidly stated, but with so much respect and
sympathy, and with such marked appreciation of the
knowledge he had gained from his correspondent,
that the reader must have regretted the divergence
of opinion as greatly as the writer.

Tyndall has given a very interesting and pathetic
account of the evident distress with which Professor
L. Agassiz, chief of the opponents of Darwin in

158 CHARLES DARWIN.

America, recognised the success of the teachings he
could not accept.

" Sprung from ji race of theologians, this celebrated man
combated to the last the theory of natural selection. One of
the man}' times I had the pleasure of meeting him in the
United States was at Mr. Winthrop's beautiful residence at
Brookline, near Boston. Rising from luncheon, we all halted,
as if by a common impulse in front of a window, and continued
there a discussion which had been started at table. The
maple was in its autumn glory; and the exquisite beauty of the
scene outside seemed, in my case, to interpenetrate without
disturbance the intellectual action. Earnestly, almost sadly,
Agassiz turned and said to the gentlemen standing round, ' I
confess that I was not prepared to see this theory received as
it has been by the best intellects of our time. Its success is
greater than I could have thought possible.' " *

The history of science can hardly supply anything
more sad than the blight which may fall on a man's
career because he is unable, from conscientious motives,
to use some great means of advance. Such a weapon
for the progress of science was provided by the Dar-
winian theory, and men were to be henceforth divided
according to their use or neglect of the new oppor-
tunities. Men who up to that time had been equals
were to be for ever separated, some to press forward
in the front rank of scientific discovery, others to
remain as interesting relics of a byegone age.

It is hardly necessary to say that this does not
apply to men, like Agassiz, who had already left their
mark deep upon the science of their day, but it has a

* Presidential address to the British Association at Belfast, 1874.
Report, p. Ixxxvii.

OPPOSITION. 1 59

very real application to those men whose position was
to be estimated by work done after the year 1858.

In the midst of those years of struggle and anxiety
which followed the appearance of the " Origin," we
meet with another instance of the same extraordinary
foresight which appeared in his contention in favour
of the persistence of the great oceans and continental
areas. I refer to his views on spontaneous generation
— a very ancient belief, and one which from time to
time has been the will-o'-the-wisp of biological specu-
lation, leading it into all kinds of fruitless and
dangerous regions.*

Dr. Carpenter's "Introduction to the Study of
Foraminifera " had been reviewed in the Athenceum
(March 28th, 1863), the writer attacking evolution
and favouring spontaneous generation, or, as it was
then called, heterogeny. Darwin wrote to Hooker, who
had lent him a copy of the paper, " Who would have
ever thought of the old stupid Athenoeum taking
to Oken-like transcendental philosophy written in
Owenian style ! . . . It will be some time before we
see ' slime, protoplasm, etc.,' generating a new animal.
... It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the
origin of life ; one might as well think of the origin
of matter." In 1871 he wrote : —

" It is often said that all the conditions for the first pro-
duction of a living organism are now present, which could
ever have been present. But if (and oh ! what a big if !) we
could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of

* Sec H. F. Osborn, " From the Greeks to Darwin" (1894).

160 CHARLES DARWIN.

ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc.,
present, that a protein e compound was chemically formed
ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present
day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed,
which would not toave been the case before living creatures
were formed."

About 1870 Dr. H. C. Bastian began working on
the subject, and brought forward in his " Origin of
of Lowest Organisms" (1871), and "The Beginnings
of Life " (1872), what he believed to be conclusive
evidence of the truth of spontaneous generation, for
which he proposed the term Archebiosis. His en-
thusiasm and strong convictions were contagious,
and for a time the belief spread rather widely,
although it soon collapsed before the researches and
arguments of Pasteur, Tyndall, and Huxley. Darwin
read " The Beginnings of Life," and wrote about it to
Wallace (August 28th, 1872) as follows:—

" His [Bastian's] general argument in favour of Archebiosis
is wonderfully strong, though I cannot think much of some few
of his arguments. The result is that I am bewildered and as-
tonished by his statements, but am not convinced, though, on
the whole, it seems to me probable that Archebiosis is true.
I am not convinced, partly I think owing to the deductive cast
of much of his reasoning ; and I know not why, but I never
feel convinced by deduction, even in the case of H. Spencer's
writings. ... I must have more evidence that germs, or the
minutest fragments of the lowest forms, are always killed by
212° of Fahr. ... As for Kotifers and Tardigrades being
spontaneously generated, my mind can no more digest such
statements, whether true or false, than my stomach can digest
a lump of lead."

161

CHAPTER XXL

VARIATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS UNDER DOMESTI-
CATION : PANGENESIS (1868).

WE now come to consider the succession of invaluable
works produced by Darwin after the appearance of the
"Origin," the last of which — that on Earthworms —
was published about six months before his death.

Darwin's method of bringing these results before
the world was somewhat different from that most
generally adopted by scientific men in this country,
although of common occurrence in Germany. The
great majority of scientific facts are here published by
the proceedings or transactions of scientific societies,
or in special journals ; and although a scientific man
frequently brings together his general results into a
volume for the public, the original communications
remain as the detailed exposition of his researches.

Darwin, too, wrote a very large number of memoirs
for the scientific societies, as may be seen from the list
in Appendix III. of the " Life and Letters," but the
volumes which he subsequently published included
all the previous details, with the addition of much
new matter, and it is these volumes rather than the
original communications which form the authoritative
statement of his investigations. Such a method was

102 CHARLES DARWIX.

possible and desirable with the subjects upon which he
worked, all of which were of great interest to the think-
ing part of the general public, as well as to the
experts ; but in* less attractive subjects it is not prob-
able that the plan could be carried out in this country
with any prospect ot success.

It has already been stated that Darwin looked on
the " Origin of Species " as a short abstract of a greater
work he intended to publish. It is likely that he at
first contemplated a comprehensive work like the
"Origin" itself, but soon found that his notes on
domesticated animals and plants, the general results of
which had been condensed into the first three chapters
of the " Origin," would form a work more than twice
the size of the latter. He began arranging these notes
on January 9th, 1860 (January 1st is the date given
in the " Autobiography "), as soon as the second edition
of the "Origin " was off his hands, but his " enormous
correspondence," as he calls it in the " Autobiography,"
with friends about the " Origin," and the reviews and
discussions upon it, must have occupied a large part
of his time; and then there was the third edition to
bring out (published April, 1861). This edition must
have cost much labour, as many parts were modified
and enlarged to meet the objections or misunder-
standing of reviewers.

Francis Darwin tells us that the third chapter of
" Animals and Plants, &c., " was still on hand at the
beginning of 1861. His work on this book was further-
more interrupted by illnesses and by other researches.

ON VARIATION. 163

Thus, during 1860 he worked at Drosera, and during
the latter part of 1861 and beginning of 1862 at
the fertilisation of orchids. In his diary for 1866
we meet with the entry, " Nov. 21st — Finished ' Pan-
genesis/" and later on, "Dec. 22nd — Began con-
cluding chapter of book." In this year, too, he brought
out the fourth edition of the " Origin." When the time
for publication approached Darwin was much disap-
pointed at the dimensions of the work. It was not
published till January 30th, 1868, when it was proved
that his fears were groundless, for a second edition of
1,250 copies were required in the following month, the
1,500 of the first edition having been all absorbed.

This work is considered by some writers to be the
greatest produced by Darwin ; but I think we shall be
right in accepting his own opinion that such words
should be applied to the "Origin." It is probable,
however, that this book stands second in importance
in the splendid list of works which have done so
much to increase our knowledge of nature and to in-
spire others to continue the good work.

"The Variation of Animals and Plants under
Domestication " opens with a very clearly written ac-
count of natural selection ; it proceeds to treat of the
domestic quadrupeds and birds, describing the differ-
ences between the various breeds of each species,
and making out as far as possible the history of their
development from each other and from the wild stock.
Cultivated plants are then treated in the same
manner. The first volume concludes with two most

164 CHARLES DARWIN.

important chapters on bud-variation and anomalous
modes of reproduction, and on inheritance.

The second volume deals with inheritance, crossing,
effect of conditions of life, sterility, hybridism, selec-
tion by man, causes and laws of variability. Finally, all
the main lines are brought to a common centre in
the wonderful chapter in which he discloses his " pro-
visional hypothesis of pangenesis." This is of such
interest, and is so characteristic of its author's power
of viewing the most divergent facts from a common
standpoint, that it is desirable to give a tolerably full
account of it.

The following is a brief statement of the various
classes of facts which Darwin attempted to connect
by his hypothesis.

Reproduction is sexual and asexual, and the latter
is of various kinds, although their differences are
more apparent than real. It may be concluded that
gemmation or budding, fission or division, the repair
of injuries, the maintenance of each part, and the
growth of the embryo " are all essentially the results
of one and the same great power."

In parthenogenesis the ovum can develop without
fertilisation, and hence the union of germs from
different individuals cannot serve as an essential
characteristic of sexual, as compared with asexual,
generation. Although sexually-produced individuals
tend to vary far more than those which are produced
asexually, this is not always the case, and the vari-
ability, when it occurs, is subject to the same laws.

OX VARIATION. 165

Sexually-produced individuals very generally pass
in development from a lower to a higher grade ; but
this can hardly be said to occur in certain forms,
such as Aphis, etc.

The differences between the two forms of repro-
duction being thus much less than at first sight
appears, we are led to inquire for the reason why the
more complex and difficult process is so universal.
Sexual reproduction appears to confer two benefits
on organisms — (1) " When species are rendered highly
variable by changed conditions of life, the free inter-
crossing of the varying individuals will tend to keep
each form fitted for its proper place in nature, and
crossing can be effected only by sexual generation " ;
(2) Many experiments tend to show that free
and wide inter - crossing induces vigour in the
offspring.

Darwin concludes that the reason why the germ-
cell perishes if it does not unite with another from
the opposite sex is simply because it includes " too
little formative matter for independent existence and
development." He was led to this conclusion by
the fact that the male and female germ-cells " do
not in ordinary cases differ in their power of giving
character to the embryo," and also from experiments
which seemed to show that a certain number of
pollen grains or of spermatozoa may be required to
fertilise a single seed or ovum. "The belief that it
is the function of the spermatozoa to communicate
life to the ovule seems a strange one, seeing that the

166 CHARLES DARWIN.

unimpregnated ovule is already alive, and continues
for a considerable time alive."

It is very remarkable to note how largely Pro-
fessor WeismanfTs conclusions on this subject were
anticipated by this part of Darwin's work.

Graft hybrids. — The probability that a graft may
alter the character of the stock to which it is united,
so that hybrid buds might be formed by budding or
grafting the tissues of distinct varieties or species,
would, if it became a certainty, prove the essential
identity of sexual and asexual reproduction : " for the
power of combining in the offspring the characters
of both parents is the most striking of all the
functions of sexual generation."

Direct action of the male element on the female. —
Pollen from another species is known to affect the
mother-plant in certain cases. Thus pollen from the
lemon has caused stripes of lemon-peel in the fruit
of the orange; the peel is, of course, formed by
the mother -plant, and is quite different from
the part which the male element is adapted to
affect — viz. the ovule. Similar cases are known
among animals, as in the celebrated example of
Lord Morton's mare.

Development. — The changes by which the embryo
reaches maturity differ immensely, even within the
limits of the same compact group. Forms which
closely resemble each other in the mature state, and
are intimately related to each other, such as the vari-
ous species of lobster and crayfish, etc., pass through

PANGENESIS. 167

a totally different developmental history. Hence we
are led to believe in the complete independence of
" each structure from that which precedes and follows
it in the course of development."

The functional independence of the elements or
units of the body. Variability and inheritance. —
Variability generally results " from changed conditions
acting during successive generations." The influence
is exerted on the sexual system, and if extreme, im-
potence tends to be produced. Bud-variation proves
that " variability is not necessarily connected with
the sexual system." The inherited effects of use and
disuse of parts imply that the changes in the cells
of a distant part of the body affect the reproductive
cells, so that the being produced from one of these
cells inherits the changes. " Nothing in the whole
circuit of physiology is more wonderful."

" Inheritance is the rule and non-inheritance the
anomaly." Inheritance follows laws, such as the
tendency for a character to appear at corresponding
ages in parent and offspring. Reversion " proves to
us that the transmission of a character and its
development .... are distinct powers." Crossing
strongly induces reversion. " Every character which
occasionally reappears is present in a latent form in
each generation."

The hypothesis of pangenesis attempts to explain
and connect together all the facts and conclusions
which have been summarised in the preceding pages.

168 CHARLES DARWIN.

This hypothesis assumes that each one of the count-
less cells of which the body of a higher animal is
composed throws off a minute gemmule which, with
those derived frOm other cells, exists in the body,
and when supplied with nutriment multiplies by
division. Each gemmule is capable of ultimate de-
velopment into a cell similar to the one from which it,
either directly or indirectly, arose. Each cell of the
body dispatches its representative, as it were, to each
single germ- cell, and this explains how it is that the
latter possess the power of reproducing the likeness
of the parent body. But the germ-cells also receive
dormant gemmules which may remain undeveloped
until some generation in the remote future. The
development of the gemmules into cells depends on
their union with the developing cells which precede
them in the order of growth. Gemmules are thrown
off during each stage of growth and during maturity.

This hypothesis of pangenesis is so called be-
cause the whole body is supposed to produce the
elements from which new individuals arise, the
germ-cells being only the union of these elements
into clusters.

The fact that hybrids may be produced by
grafting, that the pollen can act on the tissues of
the female plant, and the male germ-cells on the
future offspring of the female, implies that the re-
productive material can exist and the reproductive
processes take place in the tissues, and that they
are not confined to the germ-cells.

PANGENESIS, 169

The retention of dormant gemmules, and their
passage from generation to generation until their
development, may seem improbable; but is it more
so than the fact which their presence would explain
— viz. the transmission of latent structures and their
ultimate reappearance ?

The development of the whole plant from a
Begonia , leaf implies that these gemmules are very
widely distributed through the tissues.

The elective affinity of the gemmules for the cells
which precede them in growth may be paralleled by
the affinity of the male and female germ-cells, as we
see in the preference of a plant for the pollen grains
of its own over those of closely-allied species, or by
the attraction of the minute germs of disease to
certain tissues of the body.

It is possible that the numerous gemmules thrown
off by the cells of a complex structure, such as a
feather, " may be aggregated into a compound gem-
mule." In the case of a petal, however, where parts
as well as the whole are apt to develop, as is seen in
the case of " stripes of the calyx assuming the colour
and texture of the corolla," it is more probable that
the gemmules are separate and free. The cell itself
is a complex structure, and we do not know whether
its separate parts are not developed from the separate
gemmules of an aggregate.

Such an hypothesis explains the fundamental
similarity which has already been shown to exist
between all modes of reproduction. The gemmules

170 CHARLES DARWIN.

collected in bud or germ-cell are essentially similar ;
and were it not for the special advantages of sexual
reproduction (increased vigour and more marked vari-
ation of offspring)? we . can well believe that it would
have been much less general. The formation of graft-
hybrids, and the action of the male element on the
mother and on future offspring, become intelligible.
The antagonism between growth and sexual repro-
duction in animals, and between increase by buds,
etc., and seeds in plants, can be understood by the
use of gemmules in one direction preventing their
simultaneous use in another.

The regrowth of an amputated part, as in the
salamander or snail, is explained by the presence and
development of gemmules previously thrown off from
the part. The difficulty that a limb is produced of
the .same age as that which was lost, and not a larval
limb, and that the cells with which the gemmules
must unite at first are not those which precede them
in the course of growth, but mature cells, is met by
the consideration that this power is a special one
adapted to meet special dangers to certain parts of
certain animals, and that it is therefore probable that
appropriate provision has been made by natural
selection : it may be in the form of " a stock of
nascent cells or of partially developed gemmules."
The existence of these latter in buds, and their
absence from sexual cells, may account for bud
development being the more direct and brief of the
two. The much greater tendency to repair lost parts

PANGENESIS. 171

in lower and younger forms may be due to the same
cause.

The occasional tendency of hybrids to resemble
one parent in one part and the other in another
may be due to superabundance of gemmules in the
fertilised germ, those from one parent having " some
advantage in number, affinity, or vigour over those
derived from the other parent." The general pre-
ponderance of one parent over the other may be
similarly explained. The cases in which " the colour
or other characters of either parent tend to appear
in stripes or blotches " are to be understood by the
gemmules having an affinity for others of the same
kind.

The sterility of hybrids is entirely due to the
reproductive organs being affected; in the case of
plants they continue to propagate freely by buds. The
hybrid cells throw off hybrid gemmules which collect
in the buds but cannot do so in the reproductive
organs.

Development and metamorphosis. — The remark-
able facts of development and metamorphosis are well
explained by the hypothesis. Allied forms may pass
to a similar end through very dissimilar stages or
conversely. Parts may appear to develop within
previously existing corresponding parts, or they may
appear within parts which are quite distinct: These
divergent facts are explained by the hypothesis,
each part during each stage being formed inde-
pendently from the gemmules of the same part

172 CHARLES DARWIN.

in previous generations, and not, although it may
appear to do so, from the corresponding parts of
earlier stages. In the process of time certain parts
during certain stages may be affected by use or
disuse or surroundings, and the parts of subsequent
generations will be similarly affected, because formed
from correspondingly altered geminules ; but this need
not affect the other stages of the same parts.

Transposition and multiplication of parts. — The
cases of abnormal transposition or multiplication of
organs — for instance, the development of teeth in the
palate or of pollen in the edge of a petal — are to be
explained by supposing that the geuimules unite with
wrong cells instead of, or as well as, the right ones ;
" and this would follow from a slight change in their
elective affinities." Such slight changes are known
to occur ; for instance, certain plants " absolutely
refuse to be fertilised by their own pollen, though
abundantly fertile with that of any other individual
of the same species." Inasmuch as the cells of
adjoining parts will often have nearly the same
structure, we can understand that some slight change
in elective affinity may affect a large area. Hence
we can account for a crowd of horns on the head of
a sheep, or many spurs on the leg of a fowl, etc.
Frequently repeated parts are extremely liable to
vary in number ; in this case we have a large number
of closely allied gemmules and of points for their
union, and slight changes in elective affinity would
be specially apt to occur.

PANGENESIS. 173

VARIABILITY. — Changed conditions may lead to
irregularity in the number of geminules derived from
various parts of the body; deficiency in number might
cause variation in any part by leaving some of the
cells free to unite with allied gemmules.

The direct action of surroundings, or the effect of
use or disuse on a part, may cause corresponding
modifications of the gemmules, and through these of
the part in the succeeding generation. " A more per-
plexing problem can hardly be proposed," and yet it
receives an explanation on this hypothesis. Such
causes must, as a rule, act during many generations
before the modification reappears in the offspring.
This may be due to the unaltered gemmules derived
from earlier generations, and their gradual replace-
ment by the increasing number of altered gemmules.

Variation in plants is much more frequent in
sexually produced than it is in asexually produced
individuals. This may be due to the absence in the
latter of that great cause of variability, changes in
the reproductive organs under altered conditions.
Furthermore, the former alone pass through the
earlier phases of development, when structure is most
plastic and yields most readily to the causes in-
ducing variability.

The stability of hybrids and of many varieties
when propagated by buds, as compared with their
reversion to the parent form when propagated by
seed, remains inexplicable.

Hence variability is explained as due (1) to the

174 CHARLES DARWIN.

irregularity in number of gemmules, to their trans-
positions, and redevelopment when dormant ; and (2)
to their actual modification and the gradual replace-
ment by them of tmaltered gemrnules.

INHERITANCE. — The non- transmission by heredity
of mutilations, even when repeated for many genera-
tions, as in docking the tails of certain domesticated
breeds, may be explained by the persistence of gem-
mules from still earlier generations. The cases of
inheritance when mutilations are followed by disease,
as in Brown-Sequard's experiments on guinea-pigs,
may be due to the gemmules being attracted to the
diseased part and there destroyed.

The disappearance of a rudimentary part, together
with its occasional reappearance by reversion, is to be
understood by the existence of ancestral gemmules,
for which the corresponding cells have, except in the
cases of reversion, lost their affinity. When the
disappearance is final and complete, the gemmules
have probably perished altogether.

" Most, or perhaps all, of the secondary characters
which appertain to one sex, lie dormant in the other
sex ; that is, gemmules capable of development into
the secondary male sexual characters are included
within the female; and conversely female characters
in the male." This is seen in cases of castration or
when the sexual organs from any cause have become
functionless. The sex in which such changes are
brought about tends to develop the secondary sexual
characters of the other sex. The normal develop-

PANGENESIS.

ment of the secondary characters proper to the
of the individual may be explained by a slight
difference in the elective affinity of the cells so that
they attract the corresponding gemmules rather than
those of the opposite sex, which as we have seen
are also present.

The male characters of the male sex are in many
species latent except at certain seasons of the year,
and in both sexes the proper characters are latent
until sexual maturity. All such latent characters are
closely connected with the cases of ordinary reversion.
The appearance (whether seasonal or in the course of
development) of cells with affinities for the latent
gemmules explains the development of the characters
in question.

Certain butterflies and plants (e.g. Lythrum) pro-
duce two or more separate forms of individuals. In
these cases each individual includes the latent gem-
mules of the other forms as well as its own. Her-
maphroditism in unisexual species, and especially in
the occasional cases of insects in which the right side
of the body is one sex and the left side the other, the
line of separation dividing the individual into two
equal halves, can "be explained by slight abnormal
changes in the affinities of cells for gemmules, so
that a certain group of cells, or all the cells on one
side of the body, attract the gemmules which would
normally have remained latent.

Reversion is induced by a change of conditions
and especially by crossing. The first results of crossing

176 CHARLES DARWIN.

are usually intermediate between the parents, but in
the next generation there is commonly reversion to
one or both parent-forms, or even to a more remote
ancestor. The •existence of abundant hybridised
gemmules is shown by the propagation of the cross in
a true form by means of bads ; but dormant gemmules
from the parent-form are also present and multiply.
In the sexual elements of the hybrid there are both
pure and hybrid gemmules, and the addition of the
pure gemmules in one sex to those in the other
accounts for the reversion, especially if we assume that
pure " gemmules of the same nature would be
especially apt to combine." Partial reversion on the
one hand, and the reappearance of the hybrid form
on the other, would be respectively due to a combina-
tion of pure with hybrid gemmules, and of the hybrid
gemmules from both parent hybrids.

When characters which do not blend exist in the
parents, crossing may result in an insufficiency of
gemmules from the male alone and from the female
alone, and then dormant ancestral gemmules might
have the opportunity of development, and thus cause
reversion. Similarly certain conditions might favour
the increase and development of dormant gemmules.
Diseases appearing in alternate generations, or gain-
ing strength by the intermission of a generation,
may be due to the increase of the gemmules in the
intervening time, and the same explanation may hold
for the sudden and irregular increase of a weakly
inherited modification.

PANGENES1S. 177

Darwin ends his general conclusions with these
words : —

" No other attempt, as far as I am aware, has been made,
imperfect as this confessedly is, to connect under one point of
view these several grand classes of facts. An organic being is
a microcosm — a little universe, formed of a host of self-propa-
gating organisms, inconceivably minute and numerous as the
stars in heaven."

178

CHAPTER XXII.

PANGENESIS AND CONTINUITY OF THE GERM-PLASM :
DARWIN'S CONFIDENCE IN PANGENESIS.

DARWIN'S letters prove that he thought very highly
of this hypothesis ; and whether the future determine
it to be true or erroneous, it must surely rank as
among the greatest of his intellectual efforts. In his
autobiography he says of it : —

"An unverified hypothesis is of little or no value; but if
any one should hereafter be led to make observations by which
some such hypothesis could be established, I shall have done
good service, as an astonishing number of isolated facts can be
thus connected together and rendered intelligible."

The hypothesis was submitted to Huxley (May
27th, 1865 ?) in manuscript and alluded to in the
letter sent at the same time. An unfavourable reply
was evidently received, for we find Darwin writing to
Huxley, July 12th (1865 ?) :—

" I do not doubt your judgment is perfectly just, and I will
try to persuade myself not to publish. The whole affair is
much too speculative ; yet I think some such view will have
to be adopted, when I call to mind such facts as the inherited
effects of use and disuse, &c."

This last sentence is of great interest, and the
same opinion comes out strongly in his published

PAXGENESIS. 179

account of the hypothesis, viz. the view that the real
facts which imperatively demand some material to
pass from the body-cells to the germ-cells in order
to account for their hereditary transmission are the
effects of use and disuse, or the influence of surround-
ings— in fact, all those characters which are now
called " acquired." And it is impossible to escape
the conclusion that, if acquired characters are
transmissible by heredity, an hypothesis which
is substantially that of pangenesis will have to
be accepted. Darwin did not doubt this trans-
mission, and he framed pangenesis mainly to
account for it.

Considerable doubt has of recent years been thrown
upon the transmission of acquired characters, and if
hereafter this doubt be justified, it will be possible to
substitute for pangenesis a hypothesis like the " con-
tinuity of the germ-plasm" brought forward by
Professor Weismann. A few words indicating the
contrast between the two hypotheses may not be out
of place.

In Professor Weismann's hypothesis the germ-
plasm contained in the nucleus of the germ-cell pos-
sesses, if placed under right conditions, the power of
developing into an organism. It is not, however, en-
tirely used up during development, and the part which
remains grows and is stored in the germ-cells of the
offspring, and ultimately develops into the succeeding
generation. Hence parent and offspring resemble
each other because they are formed from the same

180 CHARLES DARWIN.

thing. There is no real break between the genera-
tions ; they are thrown up successively from a contin-
uous line of germ-plasm. In this hypothesis the germ
is the essential tiring, the body a mere secondary pro-
duct. It is a theory of Blastogenesis as contrasted
with Pangenesis. The hereditary transmission of ac-
quired characters, in which many still believe, is quite
irreconcilable with it, and if substantiated would over-
throw it altogether.

On the other hand the body-cells are the essential
elements of pangenesis, and the germ-cells the mere
meeting-places of their representatives and quite
devoid of significance on their own account. JThere
is some sort of interruption between successive
generations, as the gemmules develop into cells,
which again throw off gemmules ; the break, how-
ever, is bridged by the ancestral gemmules and by
the life of the body-cell which intervenes between
the gemmule from which it arose and that to which
it gives rise.

The remaining chief occasions on which Darwin
alludes to pangenesis in his published letters are
quoted below ; they prove his confidence in the
hypothesis and the nature of the hold it had upon his
mind.

Later on he again wrote to Huxley on the same
subject : —

" I am rather ashamed of the whole affair, but not converted
to a no-belief. . . . It is all rubbish to speculate as I have
done ; yet, if I ever have strength to publish my next book, I

PANGENESIS. 181

fear I shall not resist ' Pangenesis,' but I assure you I will put
it humbly enough. The ordinary course of development of
beings, such as the Echinodermata, in which new organs are
formed at quite remote spots from the analogous previous parts,
seems to me extremely difficult to reconcile on any view except
the free diffusion in the parent of the germs or gernmules of
each separate new organ : and so in cases of alternate gener-
ation."

To LYELL, August 22nd, 1867.

"I have been particularly pleased that you have noticed
Pangenesis. I do not know whether you ever had the feeling
of having thought so much over a subject that you had lost all
power of judging it. This is my case with Pangenesis (which is
26 or 27 years old), but I am inclined to think that if it be
admitted as a probable hypothesis it will be a somewhat
important step in Biology."

To ASA GRAY, October IQth, 1867.

"The chapter on what I call Pangenesis will be called a
mad dream, and I shall be pretty well satisfied if you think it
a dream worth publishing ; but at the bottom of my own mind
I think it contains a great truth."

To HOOKER, November 11 th [1867].

" I shall be intensely anxious to hear what you think about
Pangenesis ; though I can see how fearfully imperfect, even in
mere conjectural conclusions, it is ; yet it has been an infinite
satisfaction to me somehow to connect the various large groups
of facts, which I have long considered, by an intelligible
thread."

To FRITZ MULLER, January 30th [1868].

" .... I should very much like to hear what you think of
'* Pangenesis,' though I fear it will appear to every one far too
speculative."

182 CHARLES DARWIK.

To HOOKER, February 23rd [1868].
After expressing a fear that Pangenesis is still-
born because of the difficulty with which it is under-
stood, he says : —

"You will think me very self-sufficient, when I declare that
I feel sure if Pangenesis is now still-born it will, thank God, at
some future time reappear, begotten by some other father, and
christened by some other name. Have you ever met with any
tangible and clear view of what takes place in generation,
whether by seeds or buds, or how a long-lost character can pos-
sibly reappear ; or how the male element can possibly affect
the mother plant, or the mother animal, so that her future
progeny are affected ? Now all these points and many others
are connected together, whether truly or falsely is another
question, by Pangenesis. You see I die hard, and stick up for
my poor child."

To WALLACE, February 21th [1868],

" You cannot well imagine how much I have been pleased
by what you say about ' Pangenesis.' . . . What you say
exactly and fully expresses my feeling, viz. that it is a relief to
have some feasible explanation of the various facts, which can
be given up as soon as any better hypothesis is found. It has
certainly been an immense relief to my mind ; for I have been
stumbling over the subject for years, dimly seeing that some
relation existed between the various classes of facts. . . . You
have indeed pleased me, for I had given up the great god Pan
as a still-born deity."

To HOOKER, February 28th [1868].

" I see clearly that any satisfaction which Pan may give will
depend on the constitution of each man's rnind. ... I
heard yesterday from Wallace, who says (excuse horrid vanity),
'I can hardly tell you how much I admire the chapter on
" Pangenesis." It is a positive comfort to me to have any feasible
explanation of a difficulty that has always been haunting me,

PANGENESIS. 183

and I shall never be able to give it up till a better one supplies
its place, and that I think hardly possible. &c.' Now his fore-
going [italicised] words express my sentiments exactly and
fully : though perhaps I feel the relief extra strongly from
having during many years vainly attempted to form some hypo-
thesis. When you or Huxley say that a single cell of a plant, or
stump of an amputated limb, has the ' potentiality ' of reproduc-
ing the whole — or ' diffuses an influence,' these words give me
no positive idea ; — but, when it is said that the cells of a plant,
or stump, include atoms derived from every other cell of the
whole organism and capable of development, I gain a distinct
idea. But this idea would not be worth a rush, if it applied to
one case alone ; but it seems to me to apply to all the forms of
reproduction — inheritance— metamorphosis — to the abnormal
transposition of organs — to the direct action of the male
element on the mother plant, &c. Therefore I fully believe
that each cell does actually throw off an atom or gem mule of
its contents ; — but whether or not, this hypothesis serves as
a useful connecting link for various grand classes of physio-
logical facts, which at present stand absolutely isolated."

To V. CAEUS, March 2lst [1868].

". . . . Sir C. Lyell says to every one, 'You may not
believe in "Pangenesis," but if you once understand it, you
will never get it out of your mind.' And with this criticism
I am perfectly content. All cases of inheritance and reversion
and development now appear to me under a new light."

To FRITZ MULLER, June, 1868.

" I have yet hopes that you will think well of Pangenesis.
I feel sure that our minds are somewhat alike, and I find it a
great relief to have some definite, though hypothetical view,
when I reflect on the wonderful transformations of animals, —
the re-growth of parts,— and especially the direct action of
pollen on the mother-form, &c. It often appears to me almost
certain that the characters of the parents are ' photographed '
on the child, only by means of material atoms derived from
each cell in both parents, and developed in the child."

184 CHARLES DAIIWIN.

To ASA GRAY, May 8th [1868].

"Your article in the Nation [March 19th] seems to me
very good, and you give an excellent idea of Pangenesis —
an infant cherished»by few as yet, except his tender parent,
but which will live a long life. There is parental presumption
for you ! "

To E. RAY LANKESTER, March 15th [1870].

"I was pleased to see you refer* to my much despised
child, 'Pangenesis,' who I think will some day, under some
better nurse, turn out a fine stripling."

To WALLACE, August 28th, 1872.

"Notwithstanding all his [Dr. Bastian's] sneers I do not
strike my colours as yet about Pangenesis."

In the second edition of "Animals and Plants/'
Beale's criticism of the hypothesis is alluded to with
characteristic candour and humour : — " Dr. Lionel
Beale (Nature, May llth, 1871, p. 26) sneers at the
whole doctrine with much acerbity and some justice."
Galton's paper before the Royal Society (March 30th,
1871), upon the results of inter- transfusion of blood
as destructive of pangenesis, was answered by Darwin
in Nature (April 27th, 1871). He did "not allow
that pangenesis has as yet received its death-blow,
though from presenting so many vulnerable points
its life is always in jeopardy."

Gallon had argued that the gemmules present in
the blood of one individual would be expected to pass
into the other individual and to produce hereditary

* In " Comparative Longevity."

PANGENESIS. 1 85

effects on its offspring. This, however, did not occur.
Romanes repeated these experiments under more
rigid conditions, but with the same negative results ;
equally negative were the effects of his transplantation
of skin from one animal to another, although the
skin grew quite successfully in its new position.

186

•

CHAPTER XXIII.

DESCENT OF MAN — EXPRESSION OF EMOTIONS — EARTH-
WORMS (1871-81).

THE work on " The Descent of Man " was begun as
soon as Darwin had sent the manuscript of " Animals
and Plants" to the printers, although notes on the
subject had been collected from time to time during
the previous thirty years — in fact, ever since Darwin
had come to definite conclusions on evolution.

The book was published February 24th, 1871, but,
as in the case of his other publications, continuous
work upon the manuscript had been impossible. The
volume attracted great interest, and 5,000 copies were
printed in 1871 in addition to the first 2,500.

The full title of the book is "The Descent of
Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex," and, as this
title almost implies, it is made up of two distinct
works, which might well have been issued separately.
The first part, dealing with man, is far shorter than
the other. Darwin had from the first considered
that his theory of evolution by natural selection
would involve man as well as the other animals, arid,
that no one might accuse him of want of candour, he
had said in the " Origin " that by this work " light
would be thrown on the origin of man and his

DESCENT OF MAN.

history." But he was anxious to justify this state-
ment, which was, of course, distasteful to very
many in those days, by a most complete treatment
of the subject.

He opens this part of the work, which he calls
"The Descent or Origin of Man," by discussing the
structures which are common to man and animals,
including those which are represented in man in a
rudimentary state, and by showing the similarity of
the phases through which man and animals pass
during their embryological development.

Having thus shown that man was probably de-
scended from some lower form, he considers the mode
by which the process was effected, showing that man
possesses variability in body and mind, and is, like
other animals, subject to all the laws of inheritance
and variation, and to the direct action of surrounding
conditions, and to the effect of the use and disuse
of parts, and that his rate of increase is such as to
render a large amount of extermination inevitable.
In other words, he presents the same facilities for
the operation of natural selection as those presented
by other animals. The points in which man differs
from other animals are then considered in relation
to their possible origin by natural selection. The
differences and resemblances between the mind of
man and animals are discussed in much detail, and
the origin of the former through natural selection
is defended. This part concludes with the considera-
tion of the position of man in the animal series, his

188 CHARLES DARWIN.

birthplace and antiquity, and with an account of the
formation of races.

In the second part Darwin brings forward a large
body of evidence*in favour of his hypothesis of sexual
selection — viz. the view that, in the higher animals,
some alteration, especially of the secondary sexual
characters, is produced by the preferences and
rejections of the sex which is sought by the other.
Such results are commonly found in the males as a
result of the preferences of the females accumulated
through countless generations ; but in some species
the females court the males, and are themselves
subject to the same process of improvement by
selection.

Opinion is still divided on this most interesting
question. Wallace, more convinced than ever as to
the efficiency and scope of natural selection, after
first doubting, has finally come to reject sexual
selection altogether. Probably the majority of
naturalists are convinced by Darwin's arguments
and his great array of facts that the principle of
sexual selection is real, and accounts for certain
relatively unimportant features in the higher animals,
and they further accept Darwin's opinion that its
action has always been entirely subordinate to natural
selection.

A brief third part considers sexual selection in
relation to man.

Darwin says, in his " Autobiography," that sexual
selection and " the variation of our domestic pro-

EXPRESSION OF EMOTIONS. 189

ductions, together with the causes and laws of
variation, inheritance, and the intercrossing of plants,
are the sole subjects which I have been able to write
about in full, so as to use all the materials which I
have collected."

" The Expression of the Emotions," at first in-
tended as a chapter of the "Descent," was begun,
only two days after the proofs of the latter had
been corrected, on January 15th, 1871. The book
was published in the autumn of the following year ;
the edition consisted of 7,000 copies, and 2,000 were
printed at the end of the year ; and this, we are told,
was a mistake, as it prevented the appearance of
a second edition, with notes and corrections, during
the author's lifetime. Darwin had begun to take
notes on this subject when his first child was born,
December 27th, 1839, for he tells us that, even then,
he felt convinced " that the most complex and fine
shades of expression must all have had a gradual
and natural origin." — (" Autobiography.")

In this work Darwin argues with great wealth of
illustration and the record of numberless interesting
observations, that the movements of expression are to
be explained by three principles. The first of these is
that movements made in gratifying some desire
become by repetition so habitual that the slightest
feeling of desire leads to their performance, however
useless they may then be. The second principle is
that of antithesis — " the habit of voluntarily perform-
ing opposite movements under opposite impulses."

190 CHARLES DARWIN.

The third principle is " the direct action of the
excited nervous system on the body, independently
of the will, and independently, in large part, of

habit."

.

By showing that the expressions of emotions could
thus be explained naturally, Darwin undermined the
position taken up by Sir Charles Bell, that the muscles
used in producing expression were created for this
special end.

In 1876 he re-commenced geological work, bringing
out his previous works on " Volcanic Islands/' and on
" South America," as a single volume. In this year
too he wrote (November 16th) a most interesting
letter to James Geikie, offering an explanation of the
large stones standing in an upright position in the
drift of the south of England. He had noticed the
same thing with the flints in the red clay left upon the
chalk as a residuum after the action of solvent agencies
on the latter. This position he explained was due to
the movement following the slow subsidence of parts of
the clay as the chalk beneath dissolved, the flints ar-
ranging themselves along the lines of least resistance.
This suggested to him the view that the flints in the
drift are to be explained by the subsidence, during the
warmer climate which followed the glacial period, of
alternate layers of snow and drift accumulated during
the winters and summers respectively, of the cold
period itself.

This interesting view will, Geikie believes, come to
be accepted as the truth.

WOKK OF EARTH-WORMS. 191

The book upon "The Formation of Vegetable
Mould Through the Action of. Worms," must be in-
cluded among his geological works, although it contains
a great many observations of deep zoological interest.
It has been stated already that he wrote a paper on
this subject for the Geological Society in 1838. In
1877 he studied the mode by which Roman remains
gain their protective covering of mould ; again towards
the end of 1880 he began systematically to prepare the
book, which was published on October 10th of the fol-
lowing year. It was extremely successful, 8,500 copies
being sold in three years.

This interesting work affords a good illustration of
the tremendous results obtained, even in a moderate
time, by an immense number of workers all using their
powers in one direction. Each single earth-worm
swallows earth in the excavation of its burrow and for
the nutriment it contains, the waste material being
ejected as " castings " at the surface, and as a lining to
the burrow. But although the amount of earth thus
swallowed by a single worm is not large, worms are so
numerous that "the whole of the superficial mould . . .
has passed, and will again pass, every few years through
the bodies of worms." The result of this unceasing
transport of the deeper mould to the surface is shown
to be the burial of stones, either singly or in layers (as
in paths), the covering and consequent protection of
ancient buildings, and the preparation of soil for
plants. In addition to this, the geological denuding
agencies are assisted by the manner in which the

192 CHARLES DARWIN.

deeper soil is brought into a position in which it is
exposed to their action.

In 1879 he wrote and published a life of his grand-
father, Erasmus Darwin, as " a preliminary notice " to
the English translation of E. Krause's Life; but
Darwin's contribution forms the larger part of the
volume.

193

CHAPTER XXIV.

BOTANICAL WORKS (1862-86).

DARWIN'S botanical works are referred to separately,
and receive more systematic treatment than the others,
in the great " Life and Letters." They form, together
with the botanical letters, the subject of the seventh
to the twelfth chapters in the last volume. It will
therefore be unnecessary to treat them in any detail,
although they form some of the most important and
interesting of all his biological investigations.

Fertilisation of flowers. — " The Fertilisation of
Orchids " was the first published of the botanical works,
appearing in 1862, followed by a second and greatly
altered edition in 1877. The object of the work " is
to show that the contrivances by which orchids are
fertilised are as varied and almost as perfect as any of
the most beautiful adaptations in the animal king-
dom ; and secondly, to show that these contri-
vances have for their main object the fertilisation of
the flowers with pollen brought by insects from a dis-
tant plant." Even in 1837 Darwin had written in his
note-book, " Do not plants which have male and
female organs together [i.e. in the same flower] yet
receive influence from other plants ? Does not Lyell
give some argument about varieties being difficult to

194 CHARLES DARWIN.

keep [true] on account of pollen from other plants ?
Because this may be applied to show all plants do
receive intermixture." (Quoted in the " Life and
Letters.") In 18.41, Robert Brown, the distinguished
botanist, advised Darwin to read Sprengel's " Secret of
Nature Displayed" (Berlin, 1793). The result was to
encourage and assist Darwin in his work on fertilisa-
tion of flowers by insects, and to bring about the first
due recognition of Sprengel's merits, long after his
death.

" The Effects of Gross- and Self-fertilisation in the
Vegetable Kingdom." — This work has a very direct
bearing on that last mentioned. Darwin speaks in
the Autobiography " of having come [in 1839] to the
conclusion in my speculations on the origin of species,
that crossing played an important part in keeping
specific forms constant." Later on he came to see
that the advantage of crossing is more direct, and
results from the greater vigour of the offspring over
those of self- fertilised plants. The object of this
work, published in 1876, was to prove this point by
experimental evidence of sufficient amount, and to
show in numerous cases, by measurements of height
or weight, or by counting the number of seeds pro-
duced, that cross-fe.rtilisation invariably tends towards
the greater vigour of offspring.

Hence the motive cause for the marvellous
adaptations by which cross-fertilisation is ensured
was supplied.

" Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same

FORMS OF FLOWERS. 195

Species" was published in 1877, and a second edition
in 1880. This work, like so many others, had been
largely anticipated by the author's original papers
to scientific societies, in this case to the Linnean.
The papers were combined, brought up to date, and
with the addition of much new matter constituted
the volume. The chief part of the work is concerned
with heterostyled plants, viz. species which bear
different kinds of flowers chiefly distinguished by the
lengths of the pistil and stamens. As many as three
different forms occur in Ly thrum. In this work it is
shown that each of the forms, although possessing
both kinds of sexual organs, is adapted to be fertilised
by the pollen of another form, and that such offspring
are more vigorous than those produced by fertilisation
by the same form. He furthermore showed that
the offspring of " illegitimate " parentage (viz. those
which were fertilised by the same form) possessed,
in certain respects, a close resemblance to hybrids
among animals. He remarks in his Autobiography,
" No little discovery of mine ever gave me so much
pleasure as the making out the meaning of hetero-
styled flowers."

In addition to the heterostyled flowers, the other
differing forms borne by the same plants are con-
sidered, including the cleistogamic species, in which
minute closed flowers are borne as well as the
ordinary open ones. The former are wanting in
the scents and colours of ordinary flowers, and
are specially adapted for self-fertilisation, and the

196 CHARLES DARWIN.

production of "an abundant supply of seeds with
little expenditure."

" Climbing Plants." — The subject of this volume
was published as .a paper before the Linnean Society
in 1864. After being corrected, the material was
brought out as a volume in 1875. Darwin, as he
tells us in the Autobiography, was first led to study
the subject by a paper by Asa Gray, which appeared
in 1858 (Proc. Amer. Acad. of Arts and Sciences).
Writing to Asa Gray, August 4th, 1863, he said, " My
present hobby-horse I owe to you, viz. the tendrils."
One of the most interesting results brought forward
in this work is the fact that the upper growing part
of a twining stem bends to one side and then travels
slowly round, between two and three hours being
required for each revolution, in the case of the
hop growing in a room and observed at the period
of most active movement. The circle swept at the
27th revolution was 19 inches in diameter. In the
case of this plant the three youngest internodes (or
joints), and never less than two of them, were con-
cerned in the movement ; " by the time the lower one
ceased to revolve, the one above was in full action,
with a terminal internode just commencing to move."
The object of this movement is to strike some object
round which the plant may twine. A much grander
example was seen in Ceropegia Gardnerii, in which
three long internodes and two short ones swept a
circle over 5 feet in diameter, " at the rate of 32
or 33 inches per hour, in search of some object

MOVEMENT IN PLANTS. 197

round which to twine." The stem of the plant
is not in the least twisted by this movement.
Nearly all of the great divisions of twining plants,
leaf-climbers, and tendril-bearers "have the same
remarkable power of spontaneously revolving."

" The Power of Movements in Plants " was
published on November 6th, 1880. It embodies a
vast amount of work carried on in conjunction with
Francis Darwin. This volume bears a very direct
relation to that last mentioned, as Darwin has ex-
plained in his Autobiography :—

" In accordance with the principle of evolution it was im-
possible to account for climbing plants having been developed
in so many widely different groups unless all kinds of plants
possess some slight power of movement of an analogous kind.
This I proved to be the case ; and I was further led to a rather
wide generalisation, viz. that the great and important classes
of movements, excited by light, the attraction of gravity, &c.,
are all modified forms of the fundamental movement of circum-
nutation."

An extreme example of circumnutation has already
been described in the revolving movements of the
youngest parts of the stem of a twining plant.

The work evoked very great interest in this
country, but was severely criticised by certain German
botanists. The immense number of new observations
must always have a very high value, whatever be the
fate of the general conclusions, concerning which it
may be remarked that Darwin's conclusions have
often been criticised before, but time has shown that
he was right.

198 CHARLES DARWIN.

" Insectivorous Plants " was published July 2nd,
1875, but I consider it last, as the subject stands some-
what apart from the rest of his botanical works.
The subject was^ suggested to him by noticing the
insects caught by the leaves of the Sun-dew (Drosera}
near Hartfield. He then studied in great detail the
causes of the movement, and the sensitiveness of the
gland-tipped hairs, finding that a piece of hair
weighing T«4oo °f a grain causes one of them to
curve inwards, and alters " the condition of the con-
tents of every cell in the foot-stalk of the gland."

The greater part of the work deals with the
experiments on Drosera, which were extremely
numerous and detailed. The remainder treats of
other insectivorous plants, such as Dionsea, Pingui-
cula, Utricularia, etc. The methods of capture, the
movements of the plants under the stimulus supplied
by the living insect (or other animal), and the re-
sulting changes in the plant-cells were not the only
points studied. He also investigated the digestive
secretion and its action upon the food absorbed by
the leaves.

199

CHAPTER XXV.

LETTERS FROM DARWIN TO PROFESSOR MELDOLA

(1871-82).

BY the kindness of my friend Professor Meldola, and
the courtesy of Mr. Francis Darwin, I am enabled
to publish for the first time a series of letters written
by Charles Darwin to the former. The whole series
consists of 33 letters, written between January 28th,
1871, and February 2nd, 1882, only a few weeks
before his death.

When we remember the immense amount of cor-
respondence with which Darwin had to cope, the
constant attention required by his investigations and
publications, and the state of his health, it is deeply
interesting to read these letters, written with such
unfailing courtesy, to a younger worker in the lines
that he had suggested, and who was thereby stimu-
lated and encouraged to undertake the researches
which are now so well known.

Reading these letters and remembering the cir-
cumstances of the writer, we can understand how it
is that, although ill-health prevented his presence on
occasions at which the younger scientific men are
wont to meet — although he was known to but few
of them — nevertheless the charm of his noble and

200 CHARLES DARWIN.

generous nature was a most potent force in influencing
and attracting men ; and it was this, no less than his
epoch-making discoveries, which has made it one of
the chief regrets of many a scientific worker that he
never saw Charles Darwin.

The correspondence was opened by a letter from
Meldola informing Darwin of a case of hexadactylism
in a man at Turnham Green.

"Jan. 28 [1871]. "Down.

"DEAR SIR,— I am much obliged for your kindness in
informing me of the hexadactylous case ; but so many have
been recorded that I do not think, except under very special
circumstances, it would be worth your while further to investi-
gate it.

" With my thanks, yours faithfully and obliged,

"On. DARWIN."

The next letter refers to Meldola's communication
to Nature (he had recently written upon pangenesis
and upon sexual selection), and his work on mimicry,
protective resemblance, etc. In the latter part we
meet with an interesting reference to the researches
on cross fertilisation which are now so famous.

"June 9tk [1871]. "Down.

" DEAR SIR, — I am greatly obliged by your note. I have
read with much interest and carefully perused your letter in
Nature, and am looking out for a paper announced for Linn. Soc.
Your remarks shall all be in due time fully considered. With
respect to the separation of the sexes, I have often reflected
on the subject ; but there is much difficulty, as it seems to me
and as Nageli has insisted, inasmuch as a strong case can be
made out in favour of the view that with plants at least the
sexes were primordially distinct, then became in many cases

LETTERS. 201

united, and in not a -few cases re-separated. I have during
the last 5 or 6 years been making a most laborious series of
experiments, by which I shall be able, I think, to demonstrate
the wonderful good derived from crossing, and I am almost
sure but shall not know till the end of the summer that I shall
be able to prove that the good is precisely of the same kind
which the adult individual derives from slight changes of
conditions.

" With my sincere thanks for your interest in my work, I
remain, dear Sir, Yours very faithfully,

" CH. DARWIN."

The following letter is of great interest in relation
to many problems of sexual selection, protective
resemblance, mimicry, etc. : —

"Jan. 23, 1872. "Down.

" DEAR SIR — The point to which you refer seems to me a
very difficult one. 1st the comparison of the amount of
variability in itself would be difficult. 2ndly of all characters,
colour seems to be the most variable, as we see in domes-
ticated productions. (3) I fully agree that selection if
long continued gives fixity to characters. We see the reverse
of this in the great variability of fancy races, now being
selected by man. But to give fixity, selection must be con-
tinued for a very long period : pray consider on this head
what I have said in the Origin about the variability of
characters developed in an extraordinary manner, in com-
parison with the same characters in allied species. The
selection must also be for a definite object, and not for
anything so vague as beauty, or for the superiority of one male
in its weapons over another male, which can in like manner be
modified. This at least seems to me partly to account for the
general variability of secondary sexual characters. In the case
of mimetic insects, there is another element of doubt, as the
imitated form may be undergoing change which will be
followed by the imitating form. This latter consideration
seems to me, as remarked in my ' Descent of Man,' to throw
much light on how the process of imitation first began.

202 CHARLES DARWIN.

" I enclose a letter from Fritz Miiller which I think is well
worth reading, and which please to return to me.

"You will see he lays much stress on the difficulty of
several remotely allied forms all imitating some one species.
Mr. Wallace did not think that there was so much weight in
this objection as I do. It is, however, possible that a few
species in widely different groups, before they had diverged
much, should have accidentally resembled, to a certain extent,
some one species. You will also see in this letter a strange
speculation, which I should not dare to publish, about the
appreciation of certain colours being developed in those species
which frequently behold other forms similarly ornamented. I
do not feel at all sure that this view is as incredible as it may
at first appear. Similar ideas have passed through my mind
when considering the dull colours of all the organisms which
inhabit dull-coloured regions, such as Patagonia and the
Galapagos Is. I suppose you know Mr. Eiley's excellent
essay on mimicry in the last report on the noxious insects of
Missouri or some such title.

" I hope your work may be in every way successful.
" I remain, dear Sir, yours faithfully,

" CHARLES DARWIN."

The next letter deals with mimetic resemblance : —

" Mar. 28, 1872. "Down.

"DEAR SIR— I thank you for your information on various
subjects. The point to which you allude seems to me very
obscure, and I hardly venture to express an opinion on it
My first impression is that the colour of an imitating form
might be modified to any extent without any tendency being
given to the retention of ancient structural peculiarities. The
difficulty of the subject seems to me to follow from our
complete ignorance of the causes which have led to the generic
differences between the imitating and imitated forms. The
subject however seems worth investigating. If the imitator
habitually lives in company with the imitated, it would be apt
to follow in some respects the same habits of life, and this

LETTERS. 203

perhaps would lead to the retention or acquirement of some
of the same structural characters.

"I wish you all success in your essay, and remain, dear
Sir, yours very faithfully, « QH DARWIN.»

The next very brief letter, acknowledging the
receipt of a note, was written from Down, March 26th,
1873. It contained some sympathetic remarks upon
the progress of Meldola's work upon Mimicry. In
the succeeding letter, printed below, we find a very
definite statement of opinion as to the role of mon-
strosities in evolution : —

" Aug. 13£A [1873]. " Down.

" DEAR SIR — I am much obliged for your present which
no doubt I shall find at Down on my return home. . . .

" I am sorry to say that I cannot answer your question ;
nor do I believe that you could find it anywhere even approxi-
mately answered. It is very difficult or impossible to define
what is meant by a larger variation. Such graduate into
monstrosities or generally injurious variations. I do not
myself believe that these are often or ever taken advantage of
under nature. It is a common occurrence that abrupt and
considerable variations are transmitted in an unaltered state,
or not at all transmitted, to the offspring or to some of them.
So it is with tailless or hornless animals, and with sudden and
great changes of colour in flowers. — I wish I could have given
you any answer.

" Dear Sir, yours very faithfully, " CH. DARWIN."

The succeeding three letters show Darwin's
scrupulous care as regards the publication, although
with every acknowledgment, of the results obtained
by others. They refer to a letter from Fritz Mliller
which he had forwarded to Meldola. The latter had

204 CHARLES DARWIN.

written to ask Darwin's permission and advice as to
the inclusion of some of F. Mtiller's observations in
his most interesting paper, " Entomological Notes
bearing on Evolution" (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist.,
1878, 5th series, Vol. I. p. 155), which he was then
preparing :—

"Sept. 14, 1877. "Down.

" DEAR SIR — I have some doubts whether Fritz Miiller
would like extracts from his letters being published after so
long an interval, — that is if the letter relates to the origin of
mimicry ; for he published about a year ago an excellent
paper on this subject. I believe it was in the Jenaische
Zeitschrift, but the paper is out of its proper place in my
library and I cannot find it. If you thought it worth while
to send me your copy I could then judge about the publication
of extracts.

"I fear it is not likely that I shall have anything to
communicate to the Entomological Soc. I quite agree with
you that it is a great pity that our Entomologists should
confine themselves to describing species.

" Dear Sir, yours faithfully, " CH. DARWIN."

"Sept. Wnd [1877]. "Down.

" MY DEAR SIR — I am doubtful whether speculations in a
letter ought to be published, especially after a long interval of
time. Any fact which he states, I feel pretty sure he would
not at all object being used by anyone. — Pray do the best
you can. — I should grieve beyond measure to be accused of
a breach of confidence.— He has lately, as I mentioned, thrown
much light on the first stops in mimickry.

"With respect to dimorphic Butterflies, those about which
I have read appear at different seasons, and have been the
subject of an admirable essay by Prof. Weismann. It is some
little time since I read the essay and one subject drives
another out of my head, but I think he explains all such cases
by the direct inherited effects of temperature. He tried

LETTERS. 205

experiments. If you read German, I believe I could find
Weismann's essays and lend them to you. In your present
interesting case I really do not know what to think : it
seems rather bold to attribute the 2 coloured forms to nat.
selection, before some advantage can be pointed out. — May
not the female revert in some cases 1 I do not doubt that
the intermediate form could be eliminated as you suggest.

" I wish that my opinion could have been of any
value. . . .

" I remain yours very faithfully, " CH. DARWIN."

This last letter, with others that followed it, direct-
ing Meldola's attention to Weismann's " Studies in
the Theory of Descent," resulted in the English trans-
lation which is so admirably rendered and edited.
Many of the later letters are concerned with the
progress of this publication. The remarks about
dimorphic butterflies referred to Meldola's observa-
tion, that in one of those years in which C olios edusa
was extremely abundant, a whole series of forms had
been taken transitional between the normal orange
female and the white variety helice : —

" Sept. 27 [1877]. " Down.

" MY DEAR SIR, — It is impossible for F. M. [Fritz Mtiller]
to object to anything which you have said in your very in-
teresting little essay. — I just allude to Butterflies preferring
certain colours at p. 317 of 2nd Edit?.- of the Descent and
to the case of the species of Castnia p. 315 which has orna-
mented hinder wings and displays them, whilst 2 other
species have plain hind wings and do not display them. My
son, who has charge of my library, returns home to-night and
then we will search for Weismann. He gives splendid case
of caterpillar with coloured ocelli like true eyes, and which
frightened away birds.

" Yours sincerely, " CH. DARWIN."

206 CHARLES DARWIN.

The reference in this letter is to Meldola's paper,
"Entomological Notes bearing on Evolution," soon
afterwards published in the Annals and Magazine
of Natural History, 1878, Vol. I. p. 155. The cater-
pillar referred to is the well-known larva of the Large
Elephant Hawk Moth (Chcerocampa elpenor).

Darwin then wrote a brief note (October 19th,
1877) referring to a number of Kosmos containing an
article on " Sexual Selection." He offered to send the
number if it would interest his correspondent. The
number was sent, as the succeeding letter shows : —

"Oct. 22nd [18771. "Down.

' MY DEAR SIR, — I send Kosmos by this post. . . .

"Prof. Weismann's address is Freiburg. — I should think
he would be glad of translation, and would probably arrange
for stereotypes of Plates. — You could say as an introduction
that I had lent you his book. — To find a publisher will be
perhaps a difficulty. Should it be translated I must beg you
to get another copy, as I cannot spare mine for such a length
of time. — Wallace sent me his article and I was quite dis-
satisfied with it. — To explain a peacock's tail by vital activity
seems to me mere verbiage — a mere metaphysical principle.
" My dear Sir, yours faithfully, " CH. DARWIN.

" It will be a public benefit to bring out a translation."

Then followed three letters, January 3rd, March
24th, and March 27th, 1878 ; the first written when
Darwin was sending another number of Kosmos, the
second when sending his photograph, the third en-
closing a letter from Fritz Miiller containing some
very interesting observations on mimicry in South
American butterflies.

LETTERS. 207

He then wrote as follows : —

" April 11 118. "Down.

" MY DEAR SIR, — I should be very much obliged if you
could get some one to name the photographs of the enclosed
insect and read the enclosed letter. It seems a pretty, but I
think not new case of protective resemblance. One might
fancy that the large ocelli on the under wings were a sexual
ornament.— Perhaps these photographs might be worth ex-
hibiting at the Entomolog. Soc.— I do not want them returned
(unless indeed Dr. Zacharias wants them back, which is not
probable) or the enclosed letter.

" A single word with the name of the genus and if possible
of the species, would suffice. —

" Pray forgive my troubling you and believe me

" Yours faithfully, " CH. DARWIN.

" I am glad that F. Miiller's letter interested you. He has
published a paper with plates on the shape of the hairs or
scales on the odoriferous glands of many butterflies, which
I could send you, but I doubt whether you would care for it."

Darwin then sent another letter from Fritz
Miiller containing some interesting notes on odori-
ferous organs in butterflies, and on the occasional
failure of the female insect to deposit her eggs on
a plant which can serve as the food of the young
larvae. The beetles alluded to were a species of
Spermophagus. The two letters printed below refer
to the same subjects : —

" May 15 [1878]. " Down.

" MY DEAR SIR, — I think the enclosed will interest you. —
The letter to me need not be returned as I have had the only
important passage for my work copied out. — In the letter F. M.
[Fritz Miiller] sent me seeds of Cassia neglecta and several
beetles arrived alive, having formed their cocoons, and gnawed

208 CHARLES DARWIN.

their way out of the little peas or seeds. — These elegant
beetles, with the knowledge of their manner of development
may interest some Coleopterist.

" I hope to hear some time about Dr. Zacharias' photographs.
I received your obliging letter from Paris.

" Yours sincerely, " CH. DARWIN."

" May 25 [1878]. "Down.

" MY DEAR SIR,— The living beetles and the cocoons were
found in a small paper packet containing the seeds. Those
from which the beetles had emerged were much broken, and
the larva? had evidently attacked some of the other seeds. I
am sorry to say that some of the injured ones were thrown
away. I am glad that you are going to draw up a paper from
Fritz Miiller's letters.

" Yours sincerely, " CH. DARWIN."

After another short note, dated July 24th, 1878,
Darwin wrote the following letter, which explains
how it was that he came to write the preface to
the translation of Weismann's "Studies": —

" October 31 [1878]. " Down.

"Mr DEAR SIR, — As you are inclined to be so very liberal
as to have a translation made of Weismann's Essays on your
own risk, I feel bound to aid you to the small extent of writing
a short prefatory notice. But this is a kind of job, which I do
not feel that I can do at all well and therefore do not like ;
but I will do my best. It must, however, be short for I am
at present working very hard. I do not quite understand
whether you intend asking some Publisher to bring out the
book on commission at your cost for if so there will be no
difficulty in finding a Publisher. But if you expect any
Publisher to publish at his risk and cost ; I think from recent
experience you will have much difficulty in finding one. — I
suppose that you have asked Weismann's concurrence.

"Down is rather an awkward place to reach, as we are

LETTERS. 209

4 miles from nearest station, Orpington. But I shall be in
London for a week on Novr 17th or 18th and could see you
then at any time, and perhaps you could come to luncheon.

" But if you would prefer to come here, I shall be very
happy to see you either Saturday or Sunday, if you would let
me know hour.— I am, however, bound to tell you that my
health is always doubtful, and that my head does not allow
me to converse long with anyone.

" With the most cordial sympathy in your undertaking, I
remain, my dear Sir, yours very faithfully, « QH

In November, 1878, Darwin was in London,
staying at his daughter's house at 4, Bryanston
Street. On the 19th he wrote asking Meldola to
lunch to talk over the proposed English edition of
Weismann, and on the 25th sent the MS. of the
Preface with the following letter: —

"4 Bryanston St.,

"Nov. 25 [1878]. "Pojtman Sqre.

" MY DEAR SIR, — I send my little Preface, which I do not
at all like, but which I cannot improve. I should like here-
after to see it in type. Mr. Bates tells me that Hardwick and
Bohn of Piccadilly intend to go in for publishing solid books ;
and if your present publisher should change his mind : Mr.
Bohn might be worth applying to.

"Yours sincerely, "Cn. DARWIN."

Professor Meldola then wrote, suggesting that
Darwin should, in his Preface, point out, by references
to the " Origin of Species " and his other writings,
how far he had already traced out the lines which
Weismann had pursued in .his researches. The
suggestion was made because in a great many of
the Continental writings upon the theory of descent

210 CHARLES DARWIN.

a number of the points which had been clearly fore-
shadowed, and in some cases even explicitly stated,
by Darwin had been independently rediscovered and
published as though original. In the editorial notes
to Meldola's translation full justice to Darwin has
been done in this respect. Darwin's characteristic
reply is deeply interesting.

" Nov 26<" [1878]. " 4 Bryanston St.

"My DEAR SIR, — I am very sorry to say that I cannot agree
to your suggestion. — An author is never a fit judge of his own
work, and I should dislike extremely pointing out when and
how Weismann's conclusions and work, agreed with my own. —
I feel sure that I ought not to do this, and it would be to me
an intolerable task. Nor does it seem to me the proper office
of the Preface, which is to show what the book contains and
that the contents appear to me valuable. But I can see
no objection for you, if you think fit, to write an introduc-
tion with remarks or criticisms of any kind. Of course I would
be glad to advise you on any point as far as lay in my power,
but as a whole I could have nothing to do with it, on the
grounds above specified that an author cannot and ought not
to attempt to judge his own works or compare them with others.
I am sorry to refuse to do anything which you wish. —

" We return home early to-morrow morning. — Your green
silk seems to me a splendid colour, whatever the aesthetics may
say.— My dear Sir, yours faithfully, « QH DAEWIN.-»

The " green silk " referred to some specimens of
coal-tar colours sent to show Darwin what modern
chemistry had been able to accomplish in the way
of artificial colouring matters. They were at that
time of particular interest in connection with a
discussion which had arisen in Bryanston Street

LETTERS. 211

about the so-called "aesthetic" school, which had
become rather predominant at the period, and which
affected an abhorrence of all brilliant colouring, in
spite of the circumstance that nature abounds in
the most gorgeous hues, especially in the tropics.

The next letter refers to the adoption of the word
" phyletic " in the translation of Weisinann.

" Dec. 14 [1878]. "Down.

" MY DEAR SIR,— I am very glad that you are making good
progress with the book. — You could not apply to a worse
person than myself on any philological question. I presume
that ' phyletische ' has been adopted or modified from Hackel.
As the latter uses the word, it has nearly the sense of
genealogical. It always applies to the lines of descent, and
therefore differs somewhat from 'innate' ; for an inherited
character, though derived from the father alone or only a
single generation, would be innate in the child. I should
think ' phyletic ' would do very well, if you gave the German
word and an explanation, in a foot-note.

" There has been a delay in answering your letter, but I
have just heard from my son who is away from home, and he
says that he is sorry but he cannot well spare the time to

lecture.

"My dear Sir, yours very faithfully,

" CH. DARWIN."

Then followed two letters (January 20th, and Feb-
ruary 7th, 1879), the first written when Darwin was
sending a number of Kosmos ; the second referring
to it and other papers, and asking that his name
should be put down as a subscriber to the forth-
coming translation of Weisinann.

Later on the number of Kosmos for May, 1879, was
sent, containing (p. 100) Fritz Mtiller's paper " Ituna

212 CHARLES DARWIN.

and Thyridia." This paper, although it did not
attract sufficient attention at the time, was of the
highest importance in relation to the theory of
mimicry, as Meldola at once perceived.

Bates in his epoch-making paper in the Transac-
tions of the Linnean Society (Vol. XXIII. 1862) had
founded the theory of mimicry. Those rarer forms
which have diverged from their near allies and, in
superficial appearance, approached some distantly
related, but abundant, species inhabiting the same
tract have been, according to Bates's theory, benefit-
ing themselves in the struggle for existence. The
mimicked species are, he suggested, abundant because
they possess some special means of protection, such as
an unpleasant taste or smell, and they have an unpleas-
ant reputation which greatly aids them in the struggle
for life ; while the mimicking species, by their super-
ficial resemblance, are enabled to live upon that
reputation without possessing the special means
of defence.

Certain facts well-known to Bates, and brought
forward in his paper, were not explicable by this
theory, viz. the resemblance that often exists between
the abundant and specially protected species them-
selves. Although a few tentative suggestions were
made, such as the production of a common appearance
by similarity of climate, or food, etc., these facts
remained an unexplained mystery until this paper ot
Fritz Miiller's in the May number of Kosmos. He
there suggests that the mutual resemblance between

LETTERS. 213

the specially protected forms is advantageous, in
reducing for each of them the number of individuals
which must be sacrificed during the process of educa-
tion which their youthful enemies must undergo,
before they learn what is fit and what unfit for food.
The arrangement is, in fact, much like that between a
couple of firms that issue a common advertisement,
and so save about half the expense of advertising
alone. It is only another added to the numerous
examples of the production by natural selection, and
without the introduction of consciousness, of a result
which could not be bettered by the deliberate action
of the most acute intelligence.

Meldola at once wrote to Darwin asking his ad-
vice about the translation of F. Miiller's paper, and
received the following reply : —

" June Gth, 1879. " Down.

" MY DEAR Mu. MELDOLA, — Your best plan will be to write
to ' Dr. Ernst Krause, Friedenstrasse, 10 II. Berlin.' He is one
of the editors with whom I have corresponded. You can say
that I sent you the Journal and called your attention to the
paper, but I cannot take the liberty of advising the supply of
cliches. He is a very obliging man. Had you not better ask
for permission to translate, saying the source will be fully
acknowledged ]

" F. Miiller's view of the mutual protection was quite new
to me.

" Yours sincerely, i " CH. DARWIN."

The cliches were obtained and Meldola's translation
published in the Proceedings of the Entomological
Society for 1879, p. 20. The new contribution to the
theory of mimicry was at first somewhat severely

214 CHARLES DARWIN.

criticised, even Bates being adverse to it. Subsequent
work has abundantly justified it as by far the most
important addition to the subject since Bates's
original paper. In fact, many cases which have
been up to the present explained under the theory
of true (Batesian) mimicry are now believed to
come under that which we owe to F. Miiller — viz.
convergence between specially protected forms for
mutual benefit.

An interesting paper by Dr. F. A. Dixey, pub-
lished in the Transactions of the Entomological
Society for the present year (1896), contains convinc-
ing arguments in favour of this view as regards
some of the Pieridce of South America in relation
to the Heliconidce and Papilionidce which they
resemble.

It is of the highest interest to learn that the first in-
troduction of this new and most suggestive hypothesis
into this country was due to the direct influence of
Darwin himself, who brought it before the notice of
the one man who was likely to appreciate it at its
true value and to find the means for its presentation
to English naturalists.

In the next year Meldola wished to translate
further papers of Fritz Mliller's, and received the
following letter on the subject : —

" Nov. 25/80. "Down.

" MY DEAR SIR, — I can well believe that your labour must
have been great, and everyone is bound to aid you in any way.
" No. I. of F. Miiller's paper is in the August no. for 1877.

LETTERS. 215

" No. II.— is in the October no. for 1877.

" Both these articles I remember thinking excellent.

" I am not one of the editors of Kosmos, only a kind of
patron (!) and therefore cannot give permission ; but when you
write to the editors you can say that I have expressed a hope
that permission' would be granted, you acknowledging source
of papers.

" Heartily wishing you success and in haste to catch first
post, I remain yours very faithfully, « QH DARWIN."

Shortly after the date of the last letter Professor
Meldola came across a copy of Thomson's " Annals
of Philosophy" on a bookstall. It bore the name
"Erasmus Darwin" on the first page, and Meldola
offered it to Charles Darwin, thinking it might have
belonged to his grandfather.

" March 12th, 1881 [The date was evidently May, and not
March]. " Down.

"DEAR MR. MELDOLA, — It is very kind of you to offer to
send me the book, but I feel sure that it could not have
belonged to my grandfather. — My eldest brother's name is
Erasmus and he attended to chemistry when young, and I
suppose that the 'Annals of Philosophy' was left at my
Father's house and sold with the Library which belonged to
my sisters. — I will look to the few words of Preface to Wies-
rnann [sic], whenever I receive a proof. — With many thanks. —
" Yours very faithfully, " CH. DARWIN."

Then followed a brief note dated "Aug. 8, 1881,"
referring to some point in the work upon which
Meldola was then engaged, and which cannot now be
ascertained. Another letter of the same date referred
to the translation of Weismann, and contained some
encouraging words upon the interest created by the

216 CHARLES DARWIN.

work and upon the success of the Essex Field Club,
in which Meldola had taken a leading part. Another
brief note of August 10th, 1881, apparently refers to
some paper which cannot now be identified.

The following interesting letter is of uncertain
date : —

"? 19th, ? 1881. "Down.

"DEAR MR. MELDOLA,— When I read the F. M. [Fritz
Miiller] paper your doubt occurred to me and I must say this,
I would rather have expected that the knowledge of distaste-
ful caterpillars would have been inherited, but I distinctly
remember an account (when Wallace first propounded his
warning colors) published of some birds, I think turkeys,
being experimented upon and they shook their heads after try-
ing some caterpillars as if they had a horrid taste in their
mouths. I fancied this thing was published by Mr. Weir or
could it have been by Mr. Butler 1 It would be well to look in
Mr. Belt's * Nicaragua ' as he tried some experiments. I am
not sure that there is not some statement of the kind in it.

" Yours faithfully, « CHARLES DARWIN.

" I daresay Mr. Wallace or Bates would remember the state-
ment of some birds shaking their heads to which I refer."

The statement about the turkeys evidently refers
to Stainton's experiment with young birds of this kind,
which immediately devoured numerous protectively
coloured moths, but, after seizing, invariably rejected,
a conspicuous white species (Spilosoma menthastri).
It was Belt's ducks which shook their heads after
tasting a very conspicuous Nicaraguan frog. Darwin
wished to show by this evidence that there was
no instinctive knowledge such as would have

LETTERS. 217

saved the birds from an evidently unpleasant
experience.

The last letter, deeply interesting both on its own
account and because it was written so near the end of
Darwin's life, was a reply to one from Meldola in which
he had said that the publishers were complaining that
the list of subscribers was disappointing, and that they
had expressed the wish that Mr. Darwin could see his
way to writing a much longer introductory notice than
he had done.

"Feb. 2»<Z[1882]. "Down.

"DEAR MR. MELDOLA, — I am very sorry that I can add
nothing to my very brief notice without reading again Weis-
mann's work and getting up the whole subject by reading
my own and other books, and for so much labour I have not
strength. I have now been working at other subjects for
some years, and when a man grows as old as I am, it is a
great wrench to his brain to go back to old and half-forgotten
subjects. You would not readily believe how often I am asked
questions of all kinds, and quite lately I have had to give up
much time to do a work, not at all concerning myself, but
which I did not like to refuse, I must however somewhere
draw the line, or my life will be a misery to me.

" I have read your Preface and it seems to me excellent. I
am sorry in many ways, including the honour of England as
a scientific country, that your translation has as yet sold
badly. Does the publisher or do you lose by it ? If the pub-
lisher, though I should be sorry for him, yet it is in the way of
business ; but if you yourself lose by it, I earnestly beg you to
allow me to subscribe a trifle, viz. ten guineas, towards the
expense of this work, which you have undertaken on public
grounds.

" Pray believe me, yours very faithfully,

"On. DARWIN."

218 CHARLES DARWIN.

Darwin's generous offer, although gratefully de-
clined, was a warm encouragement in the laborious,
and in some respects thankless, task of translator and
editor — a task whict, in the case of the English edition
of Weismann's "Studies in the Theory of Descent,"
was carried out in so admirable a manner.

219

CHAPTER XXVI.

HIS LAST ILLNESS (1882).

IN the last few months of his life, towards the end of
1881 and beginning of 1882, Darwin began to suffer
from his heart, causing attacks of pain and faintness
which increased in number. On March 7th, 1882, he
had one of these seizures when walking, " and this was
the last time that he was able to reach his favourite
* sand-walk ' " (" Life and Letters "). After this he
became rather better, and on April 17th was able to
record the progress of an experiment for his son
Francis. The following sentences are quoted from
the " Life and Letters " :—

" During the night of April 18th, about a quarter to twelve,
he had a severe attack and passed into a faint, from which he
was brought back to consciousness with very great difficulty.
He seemed to recognise the approach of death, and said, ' I am
not the least afraid to die.' All the next morning he suffered
from terrible nausea and faintness, and hardly rallied before
the end came.

" He died at about four o'clock on Wednesday, April 19th,
1882."

He was buried in Westminster Abbey on April 26th.

Thus died one of the greatest of men, after a life
of patient and continuous work interrupted only by
ill-health; a man who was, perhaps, more widely

220 CHARLES DARWIN.

attacked and more grossly misrepresented than any
other, but who lived to see his teachings almost uni-
versally received ; a man whose quiet, peaceful life of
work, and whose precarious health, prevented that large
intercourse with his fellow-men which is generally
forced upon greatness, but who was so beloved by his
circle of intimate friends that, through their contagious
enthusiasm, and through the glimpses of his nature
revealed in his writings, he was in all likelihood more
greatly loved than any other man of his time by those
who knew him not.

And for all those of us who have loved Darwin,
although we have never seen him, we can at any rate
remember that we have lived in his time and have
heard the echoes of his living voice ; he has been even
more to us than he will be to future generations of
mankind — a mighty tradition, gaining rather than
losing in force and in overwhelming interest as each
passing age, inspired by his example, guided by his
teachings, adds to the knowledge of nature, and in
so doing gives an ever deeper meaning to his life
and work.

INDEX.

Abnormal Transposition, or Multiplica-
tion of Parts, 172

Acquired Characters, Transmission of,
179, 180

Agassiz, Prof. L., and Darwin, 157, 158

Animals, Variation of, under Domesti-
cation, 75, 115, 161, et seq. ; Abnor-
mal Transposition or Multiplication
of Parts, 172 ; Instinctive Know-
ledge in, denied, 216

Argyll, Duke of, on Natural Selection,
144

Atlantis Hypothesis, The, Darwin's
• Objections to, 53-55

Bastian, Dr. H. C., 160

Bates on Mimicry, 212

Bateson on Speculation and Hypothesis
in Science, 14-15

" Beagle," Darwin's Voyage in the,
21-24 ; Important Observations and
Discoveries, 23 ; Countries and
Islands visited, 23-24 ; Completion
of " A Naturalist's Voyage," 30 ;
Zoology of, 31 ; Geology of, 35

Beale, Dr. Lionel, 184

Bear and Whale, a Hypothetical Illus-
tration of Natural Selection, 151

Beetles, Wingless, 51

Birds, Experimenting with Distasteful
Caterpillars, &c., 216

Botanical Works of Darwin, 193, et seq.

Bree, Dr.," Species not Transmutable,"
149

Butler, Dr., School at Shrewsbury,
Darwin's Education at, 16, 17

Butterflies, Dimorphic, 204, 205

Cambridge, Darwin studying at, 18-20 ;

Revisited, 25
Carpenter, Dr., 159
Carus, V., 183
Case, Mr., Darwin attends his School at

Shrewsbury, 16

"Challenger" Expedition, The, 53, 55
Cirripedia, Monographs on the, 36
Climbing Plants, 196 ; Revolution of

the Upper Part, 196
Copley Medal of the Royal Society

awarded to Charles Darwin, 109 ;

to Sir Joseph Hooker, 111
Coral Reefs, Work upon the, 32 ; Theory

of Origin, 33; Dr. John Murray

rejects the Darwinian Theory,

33

Creative Hypothesis, Huxley on the, 135
Crossing in Plants, The Advantages of,

194
Cross-fertilisation in Plants, 201

Darwin, Charles, Birthplace, 9 ; His
Parentage, 10 ; Family Genius, 10 ;
Secret of his Strength, 13-15 ; his
high Valuation of Hypothesis, 14 ;
Boyhood, 16-17; School-life, 16;
Love of Sport, 16 ; at Edinburgh
17; Dislike of Dissection, 17; First
Scientific Discovery and Paper, 17,
18; at Cambridge, 18-20; his
Friendship with Professors Hens-
low and Sedgwick, 19 ; Voyage of
the " Beagle," 21, et seq. ; Prepara-
tion for and Effects of the Voyage,
22 ; the Most Important Discoveries
during, 23; Places Visited, 23, 24 ;
Re-visits Cambridge, 25 ; Work
upon the Collections, and the
" Naturalist's Voyage," 25 ; at Lon-
don, 25 ; Origin of Species, 25-29 ;
Geological Work, 29, 33 ; Comple-
tion of "A Naturalist's Voyage,"
30 ; Zoology of the Voyage of the
"Beagle," 31; Papers on Earth-
Worms, 31 ; Marriage, 32 ; Book on
the Coral Reefs, 32 ; Ill-health. 32 ;
at Down, 35 ; his Career as a Biolo-
gist, 37 ; Systematic Work, 37 ; his
Dislike of Species-mongers, 39, 40 ;
Death of his Father and Daughter,
41 ; Growth of the Origin of Species
Theory, 42-59 ; Correspondence
with Friends, 50-59 ; Experiments
with Seeds in Salt Walter, 51, 52 ;
Letter to Wedgwood, 52; Objec-
tions to the Atlantis Hypothesis,
53, 55 ; Letter to Lyell, 53 ; Friend-
ship and Correspondence with
Wallace, 60-64, 81-86 ; their Joint
Papers Presented to the Linnean
Society, 46, 62 ; Letter to Asa Gray
on Selection, 68-70 ; Comparison
and Reception of the Joint Papers,
78-82; Delay in Publishing his
Discoveries, 90 ; Preparation of
Origin of Species, 95, et seq. ; Obser-
vations, 96 ; Appeals to Lyell, 97 ;
Letter to John Murray, 97 ; his
Influence upon Lyell, 105 ; Re-
ceives the Copley Medal of the
Royal Society, 109 ; his Indebted-
ness to Lyell's Teaching, 110; In-
fluence upon Hooker and Asa Gray,
111 ; his Controversy with Asa
Gray, 114-118 ; his Influence upon
Huxley, 119-143; his Views of
Natural Selection as the Cause of
Evolution not accepted by Huxley,
121-128 ; Extracts from Letters
showing Difficulty with which

222

INDEX.

Natural Selection was Understood, |
145, et seq. ; on Spontaneous Genera-
tion, 108, 159 ; and Bastian, 160 ; his
Later Works, 161; his Theory of
Pangenesis, 163, et seq.; Variation
of Animals and Plants under Do-
mestication, Outline of the Book,
163 ; on Sexual and Asexual Repro-
ductions, 164, et seq. ;. Extracts
from Letters to Friends on Pan-
genesis, 178, et seq. ; " The Descent
of Man," 186 ; " The Expression of
the Emotions," 189; "Volcanic
Islands," 190 ; " South America,"
190 ; " The Formation of Vegetable
Mould through the Action of
Worms," 191 ; his Life of Erasmus
Darwin, 192; "Fertilisation of
Orchids," 193; Cross- and Self-
Fertilisation in the Vegetable
Kingdom, 194 ; Different Forms of
Flowers on Plants of Same Species,
194 ; Climbing Plants, 196 ; " Power
of Movement in Plants," 197 ; " In-
sectivorous Plants," 198 ; Letters to
Prof. Meldola, 199, et seq. ; his Last
Illness, 219 ; and Death, 220

Darwin, Erasmus, Brother of Charles,
11

Darwin, Erasmus, Grandfather of
Charles, 10, 192

Darwin, Prof. George,Brother of Charles,

Darwin, Robert Waring, Father of

Charles, 10 ; Profession and

Character, 10; his Dislike to

the "Beagle" Expedition, 21-22;

Death of, 41
Darwin Medal of the Royal Society

awarded to Huxley, The, 140
Darwinism not Evolution, Huxley's

Speeches, 139-141
Deposits, Oceanic, 55
Descent of Man, The, 186
Development, 166, 171
Dixey, Dr. F. A., Paper on Mimicry,

214
Domestication, Variation by, of Animals

and Plants, 115, 161, et seq. ; of

Animals, 75

Down, Darwin's Home at, 35
Drosera and Other Insectivorous

Plants, 198

Earthworms, 191 ; Castings of, 191 ;
Papers on the, 31

Edinburgh, Darwin studying for Medi-
cine at, 17

"Emotions, The Expression of the,"
189, 190

Evolution, First Recorded Thoughts
upon, 28 ; Natural Selection as a
Cause not accepted by Huxley, 121,
et seq. ; the Argument for, 100 ; sup-
ported by Huxley, 121 ; Huxley
agrees with Darwin, 121, et seq. ;

Discussion at Meeting of the British
Association, 82, 138 ; not Darwin-
ism, 139-141

"Expression of the Emotions, The,"
189, 190

Extinction, 43-45

Fertilisation of Germ Cells, 165; "of
Orchids, The," 193 ; of Flowers by
Insects, 193 ; Effects of Cross- and
Self-, 194

Fitzroy, Capt., of the "Beagle," 21, 22

Flowers, The Fertilisation of, by In-
sects, 193 ; Effects of Cross- and
Self-Fertilisation compared, 194 ;
Different Forms on the same Plant,
195

Flustra, Darwin's Discovery of the Free-
Swimming Larvae of, 18

Forbes, Edward, and the Atlantis
Hypothesis, 53

"Formation of Vegetable Mould through
the Action of Worms, The," 191

Fox, W. Darwin, 19

Galapagos Archipelago, The Animals,
etc., of the, 26, 27, 42

Galton, F., 184

Geikie, James, 190

Geological Society, The, Darwin ap-
pointed Secretary, 29 ; Papers on
the Earthworms, 31

Geology of the Voyage of the " Beagle,"
35

Glacial Phenomena, Darwin's Paper
upon, 33

Graft-Hybrids, 166

Grafting, Production of Hybrids by, 168

Gray, Asa, Darwin's Correspondence
with, 51, 55, 107, 181, 184; his In-
fluence upon, 112 ; Darwin's Con-
troversy with, 114-118

Gray, Dr., 146, 149

Henslow, Prof., Friendship with Dar-
win, 18-21

Herbert, J. M., on Darwin's Character,
19, 20

Hereditary Genius, Evidences in the
Darwin Family, 10, 11

Heredity, Theories" of, 167, 174

Hermaphroditism, 175

Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, his Refer-
ences to Darwin, 9 ; his Correction
of Darwin, 9

Hooker, Sir Joseph, 37, 48 ; Darwin's
Letters to, on Species-mongers,
39-40 : Darwin's Opinion of, 48 ;
Friendship and Correspondence
with Darwin, 50 ; Lyell's Corres-
pondence with, as to Specific
Centres, 57 ; Darwin's Influence
upon, 110, et seq. ; awarded the
Copley Medal of the Royal Society,
111; and Uarwin, 146; Darwin
Writing on Pangenesis, 181, 182

INDEX.

223

Huxley, Prof., Criticisms of Darwin's
Theory, 46, 48 ; on Teleology, 113 ;
Darwin's Influence upon, 119-143 ;
agrees with Darwin on Evolution,
121 ; Views on Natural Selection,
121, 124, 126, 138 ; Article in the
Times on the Origin of Species,
124 ; his Article in the Westminster
Review, 125 ; Lectures on the Causes
of the Phenomena of Organic
Nature, 128, 142 ; Views as to
Natural Selection not changed,
137, 138 ; Speech at the British.
Association Meeting at Oxfc^r-
139; awarded the Darwin Medal
of the Royal Society, 140 ; Darwin-
ism, not Evolution, 140, 141 ; and
the Bishop of Oxford, 155

Hybrid Grafts, 166

Hybridism, 175, 176

Hybrids, Tendency to Resemble one
Parent, 171 ; Sterility of, 171 ; Pro-
duced by Grafting, 168

Hypothesis and Speculation, Bearing
on Science, 14, 15

Inheritance, The Theories of, 167, 174
Insectivorous Plants, 198
Instinctive Knowledge in Animals
denied by Darwin, 216

Jenkin, Fleming, 81

Lamarck's Theory of Evolution, 99 ;
Comparison with Darwin's, 148,
150

Lankester, Prof. E. Ray, 99, 184

Linnean Society, Joint Memoirs by Dar-
win and Wallace, read before, 65,
et seq.

Lowe, Robert, 150

Lyell, Sir Charles, Influence on Darwin,
29, 30, 51 ; and Continental Exten-
sions, 53 ; and Hooker's Agreement
on the Specific Centres Theory, 57 ;
Darwin's Appeal to, on the Natural
Selection, 97 ; Influence of Darwin
upon, 105 ; Accepts Darwin's
Views, 108, 109; Death of, 109;
Darwin's Letter on Pangenesis,
181

Ly thrum, Different Forms of Flowers
on the, 195

Macleay, W. S., 150

Mai thus on Population, its Influence

on Darwin, 46 ; and on Wallace,

88, 89

Man, The Descent of, 186
Meldola, Prof., on Systematic Work, 37 ;

and Darwin, 199, et seq.
Metamorphosis, 171
Mimetic Resemblance, 202
Mimicry, 202. 204 ; Bates' Theory, 212 ;

Fritz Miiller's Theory, 212; Dixey's

paper on, 214

Miiller, Fritz, Darwin's Letters to, 181,
183; on Mimicry, 212-214; his
Paper Translated, 213

Murray, Andrew, 152

Murray, Dr. John, Controversy as to
the Origin of Coral Reefs, 33

Naming of Species. Darwin on the, 39,
40

Natural Selection, Early Impressions
on Darwin, 30, 45^46 ; Survival of
the FjUeetr~5^TSp<KMfic Centres,
)arwin's Paper on, 65 ; Theory
of, 68-70 ; Wallace's Discovery of
88-91 ; Lord Salisbury's Attack on,
82, 138 ; Canon Tristram, the First
Publicly to Accept the Theory,
92-94 ; Argument for, 100-103 ;
Huxley not convinced as to Suffi-
ciency of the Evidence of, 121, 123,
124, 126 ; as the Highest Attempt
• to Account for Evolution, 129 ;
Huxley's Description of the Theory,
136, 137 ; H. C. Watson on, 144 ;
Hostile Criticisms, 144, et seq. ;
'Why the Term Avas Chosen, 147

" Naturalist's Voyage, A," Completion
of, 30

Newton, Prof., Speech at the British
Association, 153

Nineteenth Century, The Duke of
Argyll's Article in the, 144

Orchids, the Fertilisation of, 193
Origin of Species, Darwin's Theory of
the ; Early Reflections upon, 25-29 ;
Growth of the Theory, 42 ; Separate
Creation Theory Inadequate, 42 ;
Principles of Development, 45 ;
First Account of Darwin's Theory,
46; the Sketch Enlarged, 46;
Profs. Huxley and Newton's Criti-
cisms, 46, 47 ; Divergence of Char-
acter, 47, 48 ; Competition, 47, 56 ;
Darwin's Arrangements for the
Publication in case of his Death,
48 ; Darwin and Wallace's Joint
Paper Presented' to the Linnean
Society, 46, 62 ; his Confidence, 48 ;
Correspondence with Friends, 50 ;
Immutability of Species denied, 50 ;
Theory not understood by Natural-
ists, 55 ; the Polyphyletic Theory,
57 ; Specific Centres, 57 ; Darwin
and Wallace, 60 ; their Papers
before the Linnean Society, 62-77 ;
Struggle for Life, 05-77 ; Principles
of, 68-70 ; Comparison of the Joint
Memoir, 78, et seq. ; Preparation of
the Work on, 95, et. seq. ; Interest
of Lyell and Hooker in its Publica-
tion, 95 ; Letters to John Murray,
the Publisher. 97 ; full Title of the
Volume, 98; Outline of the Book
and its Various Editions, 100-104 ;
its Reception by Lyell, 105 ; by

224

IXDEX.

Hooker, 111 ; by Asa Gray, 112 ;
and by Huxley, 119 ; Huxley's
Article in the Times, 124 ; and in

/. the Westminster Review, 125 ; Hux-
ley's high Tribute to Darwin's
Theory, 130 ; Difficulty with Avhich
Understood, 144 ; et seq. ; Regarded
by Darwin as an Abstract of a
Larger Work, 162

Osborn, Prof. , 79, 80

Oxford, the Bishop of, and Huxley, 155

Pangenesis, Darwin's Hypothesis of,
164, et seq. ; his Confidence in the
Theory, 180, et seq.

Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, The, 31

Parthenogenesis, 164

Petrels at St. Kilda, West Indian nuts
found in, 96

Plants and Animals, Variation of, under
Domestication, 161 ; Production of
Abnormal Parts, 172 ; Separate
forms on same Individual, 175 ;
Different forms of Flowers on the
same Species, 194 ; Climbing, 196 ;
Power of Movements in, 197 ; In-
sectivorous, 198

Pollen, Fertilisation of Ovule, 166

" Power of Movements in Plants, The,"
197

Protective Mimicry, 203

Reproduction of an Amputated Limb or

part, 170
Reproduction, Sexual and Asexual, 104,

et seq.

Reversion, 167, 175
Rolleston, Prof., 155, 156
Romanes, Prof. G. J., 185

Salisbury, Lord, Speech at the British
Association Meeting at Oxford, 82,
83, 138

Scientific Discoverer, The Qualifications
of a, 12

Seeds, Experiments on the Vitality of,
in Salt- Water, 51, 52

Sedgwick, Prof., Darwin's Friendship
with, 18 ; his Excursions with, 20

Sexual and Asexual Reproduction, 164,
et seq. ; Advantages of, 165 ; Cross-
Fertilisation in Plants, 166 ; Char-
acters, 174-177 ; Selection Theory,
(57, 188, ft seq. ; rejected by Wallace,
188 ; Darwin's Letter to Meldola,
201

Shrewsbury, Darwin's Birthplace, 9 ;
and School-life at, 16; Re-visited,
'25

" South America," 190

South America, Some Observations on
the Geology of, 26

Species, New, The Origin of, 56, et seq. ;

"Species not Transmutable," Dr.

Bree's Book, 149
Species-mongers, Darwin's Dislike of,

39, 40

Speculation and Hypothesis, 14, 15
Spencer, Herbert, Term of Survival of

the Fittest, 148

Spontaneous Generation, 108, 159
Sterility of Hybrids, 171
Struggle for Existence, The, 65-67, 71-77
Survival of the Fittest, The, 148

Teleology, 113, 114

Ternate, Wallace's house at, 63

Times, Huxley's Article on the Origin

of Species in, 124
Transmutation of Species, 26, 149
Tristram, Canon, 92-94 ; Paper on

Ornithology of Northern Africa, 92
Tuckwell, Rev. W., 155
Turkeys, Experimenting upon with

Distasteful Caterpillars, 216
Tyndall, Prof., 157

Use and Disuse, The Inherited Effects
of, 167, 179

Variability, 167, 173

Variation, of Organic Being, Darwin's
Papers upon, 65 ; Wallace's Paper
on, 71, et seq. ; and Selection
Relative. Importance of, 9(i ; Under
Domestication, 115, 161

Varieties, Departure from the Original
Type, 71-77

" Volcanic Islands," 190

Wallace, Alfred Russel, and Darwin's
Joint Paper Presented to Linnean
_ Society, 4(5, 62; and Darwin, 53,
60-64, 81-8(5, 134 ; Paper Published
on the Law Regulating new Species,
60 ; Essays on Variations from
Original Type, 61, 71-77 ; house
at Ternate, 63 ; Comparison
of the Joint Memoir, 78-86; his
Discovery of Natural Selection,
87-91 ; Darwin's Letter on Bastian's
Theory of Archebiosis, 160 ; Dar-
Avin's Letter to, on Pangenesis, 182

Watson, H. C., 144

Wedgwood, Josiah, IS

Weismann, Prof., on Germ-Plasm, 179 ;
" Studies in the Theory of Descent,"
Meldola's Translation, 205-210

Westminster Review, Huxley's Article on
Origin of Species in, 125

Wilberforce, Bishop, 149

Zoology of the Voyage of the " Beagle,"
The, 31

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