XIV PREFACE. 



the " Naturliche Schopfimgsgeschiclite '* in Germany. This 

 book took its origin in the shorthand notes of a course ot 

 lectures which treated, before a mixed audience and in 

 a popular form, the most important topics discussed in the 

 " Generelle Morphologie." The notes were subsequently 

 revised, and received considerable additions. The book 

 appeared first in 1868, its fourth edition in 1873, and has 

 been translated into several languages. I hope that it may 

 also find sympathy in the fatherland of Darwin, the more so 

 since it contains special morphological evidence in favour of 

 many of the important doctrines with which this greatest 

 naturalist of our century has enriched science. Proud as 

 England may be to be called the fatherland of Newton, who, 

 with his law of gravitation, brought inorganic nature under 

 the dominion of natural laws of cause and effect, yet may 

 she with even greater pride reckon Charles Darwin among 

 her sons — he who solved the yet harder problem of bring- 

 ing the complicated phenomena of organic nature under the 

 sway of the same natural laws. 



The reproach which is now oftenest made against the 

 Descent Theory is that it is not securely founded, not suffi- 

 ciently proven. Not only its distinct opponents maintain that 

 there is a want of satisfactory proofs, but even faint-hearted 

 and wavering adherents declare that Darwin's hypothesis is 

 still wanting fundamental proof. Neither the former nor the 

 latter estimate rightly the immeasurable weight which the 

 great series of phenomena of comparative anatomy and onto- 

 geny, palaeontology and taxonomy, chorology and cecology, 

 cast into the scale in favour of the doctrine of filiation. 

 Darwin's Theory of Selection, which completely explains the 

 origin of species through the combined action of Inheritance 



