402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE FIEST PEESENTATION OF THE THEORY OF 

 NATURAL SELECTION"! 



By Sir JOSEPH HOOKER 



T Have been honored by receiving from the council of our societv 

 -L a request that I would take up a little of your time and attention 

 with a brief address. No theme or subject was vouchsafed to me by the 

 council, but, having gratefully accepted the honor, I was bound to find 

 one for myself. It soon dawned upon me that the object sought by 

 my selection might have been that, considering the intimate terms upon 

 which Mr. Darwin extended to me his friendship, I could from my 

 memory contribute to the knowledge of some important event in his 

 career. It having been intimated to me that this was in a measure 

 true, I have selected as such an event one germane to this celebration 

 and also engraven on my memor}^, namely, the considerations which 

 determined Mr. Darwin to assent to the course which Sir Charles Lyell 

 and I had suggested to him, that of our presenting to the society, in one 

 communication, his own and Mr. Wallace's theories on the effect of 

 variation and the struggle for existence on the evolution of species.^ 



You have all read Francis Darwin's fascinating work as Editor of 

 his father's " Life and Letters," where you will find^ a letter addressed, 

 on June 18, 1858, to Sir Charles Lyell by Mr. Darwin, who states that 

 he had on that day received a communication from Mr. Wallace written 

 from the Celebes Islands requesting that it might be sent to him (Sir 

 Charles). 



In a covering letter ]\Ir. Darwin pointed out that the enclosure 

 contained a sketch of a theoiy of natural selection as depending on the 

 struggle for existence so identical with one he himself entertained 

 and fully described in manuscript in 1843, that he never saw a more 

 striking coincidence : had Mr. Wallace seen his sketch he could not 

 have made a better short abstract, even his terms standing " as heads 

 of my chapters." He goes on to say that he would at once write to 

 Mr. Wallace offering to send his manuscript to any journal; and con- 

 cludes: So my originality is smashed, though my book (the forth- 

 coming "Origin of Species"), if it Avill have any value will not be 

 deteriorated, as all know the labor consists in the application of the 

 theory. 



^ Reply on receiving the Darwin-Wallace medal of the Linnean Society of 

 London on July 1, 1908. 



2 See Jour. Linn. Soc, III. (1859), pp. 45-61. 

 ^Vol. IT., p. 110. 



