238 DARWINIANA. 



cally baseless ; a recent instance of the sort we maj 

 have to consider further on. Others, like the youth 

 at the river's bank, have been waiting in confident 

 expectation of seeing the current run itself dry. On 

 the other hand, a notable proportion of the more active- 

 minded naturalists had already come to doubt the re- 

 ceived doctrine of the entire fixity of species, and 

 still more that of their independent and supernatural 

 origination. ^Vhile their systematic work all proceed- 

 ed implicitly upon the hypothesis of the independence 

 and entire permanence of species, they were perceiv- 

 ing more or less clearly that the whole question was 

 inevitably to be mooted again, and so were prepared 

 to give the alternative hypothesis a dispassionate con- 

 sideration. The veteran Lyell set an early example, 

 and, on a reconsideration of the whole question, wrote 

 anew r his famous chapter and reversed his former and 

 weighty opinion. Owen, still earlier, signified his ad- 

 hesion to the doctrine of derivation in some form, but 

 apparently upon general, speculative grounds ; for he 

 repudiated natural selection, and offered no other 

 natural solution of the mystery of the orderly incom- 

 ing of cognate forms. As examples of the effect of 

 Darwin's " Origin of Species " upon the minds of nat- 

 uralists who are no longer young, and whose pre- 

 possessions, even more than Ly ell's, were likely to bias 

 them against the new doctrine, two from the botanical 

 6ide are brought to our notice through recent miscel- 

 laneous writings which are now before us. 1 



• 



1 Since this article was in type, noteworthy examples of appreciative 

 scientific judgment of the derivative hypothesis have come to hand : 1. 

 In the opening address to the Geological Section of the British Associa- 



