Bullek. — Illustrations of Darwinism. 77 



also, to a paper by one of our members, Mr. Coleman Phillips, 

 " On a Common Vital Force," which appears in the last 

 volume of our " Transactions." This essay affords pleasant 

 and amusing reading, but it is impossible to take it seriously. 

 For example, when a writer, professing to deal scientifically 

 with his subject, brackets together the Moa and our domestic 

 fowl — a Eatite bird with a Carinate — as " one species alone of 

 living things," there is an end to any attempt at rational dis- 

 cussion. Mr. Coleman Phillips, in this paper, admits that he 

 has not yet finished reading Darwin's "Origin of Species," but 

 says, "What I have read has filled me w r ith pain," and he pro- 

 ceeds to treat in a slighting spirit a book which, in the vigorous 

 language of Professor Newton, " has effected the greatest 

 revolution of human thought in this or perhaps in any other 

 century."* For my own part, I regret, as well for the author's 

 sake as for the credit of the Society, that such a paper 

 was allowed to appear in the "Transactions." With these 

 introductory remarks, for clearing the ground as it were, I 

 shall proceed to discuss the subject which I have selected for 

 my theme this evening. 



The ornithology of New Zealand, apart from its intrinsic 

 interest, presents to the thoughtful naturalist several aspects 

 of great philosophical significance. Not the least of these is 

 that of the many peculiar forms which it contains, and their 

 local distribution, because of the remarkable evidence hereby 

 furnished in support of the now generally accepted Darwinian 

 theory of the creation of species in the organic world — that is 



* "The theory of evolution was started as an hypothesis byBuffon, and 

 defended and modified by Lamarck and others, but was regarded by most 

 scientific men as a wild dream, until Darwin and Wallace, after years of 

 patient accumulation of materials, overwhelmed the learned world with 

 such a vast array of facts that with scarcely an exception scientific men 

 acknowledged their defeat, and the hypothesis of evolution was raised to 

 the rank of a theory as firmly based on facts as Newton's theory of gravi- 

 tation, or the undulatory theory of light The great charm of 



Darwin's theory of natural selection is its simplicity. The theory of 

 evolution by descent with modification had a great deal to recommend it; 

 but the difficulty always presented itself, By what possible machinery 

 could it be worked? To suppose a special creation of every species was 

 bad enough, and looked weak, as if the clock always wanted mending or 

 altering to make it go right. But to suppose not precisely a special crea- 

 tion, but a special interference, in a given direction, with the law of like 

 producing like, at every generation, was a thousand times worse ; and, con- 

 sequently, of two evils scientific men chose the least, and the theory of 

 evolution was laid on the shelf until Charles Darwin and Wallace took it 

 down again. The fact of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for 

 existence is such a simple theory that a child can understand it; and nob 

 only the scientific world, but almost every educated man, accepted 

 the new theory of evolution as soon as they saw — or thought they 

 saw — the simplicity of the machinery by which it is worked." — Ste- 

 bohm. 



