CHAPTER II 



EVOLUTION 



18441858 



SINCE the publication of the Life and Letters, Mr. Huxley's obituary 

 notice of Charles Darwin has appeared. 1 This masterly paper is, in our 

 opinion, the finest of the great series of Darwinian essays which we owe 

 to Mr. Huxley. We would venture to recommend it to our readers as the 

 best possible introduction to these pages. There is, however, one small 

 point in which we differ from Mr. Huxley. In discussing the growth 

 of Mr. Darwin's evolutionary views, Mr. Huxley quotes from the auto- 

 biography 2 a passage in which the writer describes the deep impression 

 made on his mind by certain groups of facts observed in South 

 America. Mr. Huxley goes on : " The facts to which reference is 

 here made were, without doubt, eminently fitted to attract the attention 

 of a philosophical thinker ; but, until the relations of the existing with 

 the extinct species, and of the species of the different geographical 

 areas with one another, were determined with some exactness, 

 they afforded but an unsafe foundation for speculation. It was not 

 possible that this determination should have been effected before 

 the return of the Beagle to England ; and thus the date 3 which Darwin 

 (writing in 1837) assigns to the dawn of the new light which was 

 rising in his mind, becomes intelligible." This seems to us inconsistent 

 with Darwin's own statement that it was especially the character of the 

 "species on Galapagos Archipelago" which had impressed him. 4 This 

 must refer to the zoological specimens : no doubt he was thinking of 

 the birds, but these he had himself collected in i835, 5 and no accurate 



1 Proc. R. Soc., vol. 44, 1888, and Collected Essays (Dariviniana\ p. 253, 



1899. 



2 Life and Letters, I., p. 82. Some account of the origin of his evolu- 

 tionary views is given in a letter to Jenyns (Blomefield), Life and Letters, 

 ii. p. 34. 



3 The date in question is July 1837, when he " opened first note-book 

 on Transmutation of Species." 



4 See Life and Letters, L, p. 276. 



5 He wrote in his Journal, p. 394, " My attention was first thoroughly 

 aroused, by comparing together the numerous specimens shot by myself 

 and several other parties on board,'' 3 etc. 



37 



