28 Darwin- Wallace Celebration. 



when in some outcomes of their doctrine they were not in 

 perfect agreement. 



It is a delightful thing for us all to see here still among us, 

 still working and writing, one of those two whose achieve- 

 ment of fifty years ago we celebrate Dr. Alfred Russel 

 Wallace. And it is no less a cause of happiness that 

 we shold have with us the great botanist and traveller 

 Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker ; older than Wallace by some 

 years, yet still full of strength and wisdom. We all know 

 how greatly Sir Joseph Hooker's investigations and writings 

 on the Flora of the Southern Hemisphere contributed to the 

 development of Darwin's views and arguments, and how he 

 was almost daily in correspondence with Darwin during the 

 latter half of the past century. 



My own personal recollection does not extend to the great 

 day in July, 1858, but when the ' Origin of Species ' was 

 published in the following year, and the controversy and 

 criticism which it excited burst upon us, the battle became a 

 part of my daily life. 



I mention this because I think I am able to say that great 

 as was the interest excited by the new doctrine in the 

 scientific world, and wild and angry as was the opposition to 

 it in some quarters, few, if any, who took part in the scenes 

 attending the birth and earlier reception of Darwin's ' Origin 

 of Species,' had a pre-vision of the enormous and all- 

 important influence which that doctrine was destined to 

 exercise upon every line of human thought. 



When the ' Origin of Species ' appeared there were many 

 men alive who had witnessed the opposition to the geological 

 doctrine of " uniformity " put forward by Charles Lyell, who 

 was soon to accept the Darwin- Wallace Theory, and was 

 regarded by Darwin himself as a sort of elder brother in 

 science the man of all others whose adherence he desired. 



Lyell had been denounced and persecuted socially for his 

 geological teaching, but the storm had passed, the uni- 

 formitarian geology had been accepted without causing a 

 revolution. Most scientific men thought that the same 

 general acquiescence would follow the denunciations hurled 



