440 THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY 



of work is man ! How noble in reason ! How infinite in faculty ! 

 In form and moving how express and admirable ! In apprehen- 

 sion, how like a god ! The beauty of the world ! The paragon 

 of animals !" Yet to the distempered mind of Hamlet all this is 

 but the " quiutessence of dust," jast as to the fanatical Darwinist 

 it is but a Chemical and Mechanical development of an Ape ; as 

 the Ape is of the Marsupial, as the Marsupial is of the Newt, the 

 Newt of the Shark, the Shark of the Worm, and the Worm of a 

 microscopic pellet of Autogenous Protoplasm. Nothing more, 

 but only this ! 



It is likely enough that for all their wild speeches, the evolu- 

 tionists, like the positivists before them, do not really intend to 

 work any organic change in society, or to injure its moral foun- 

 dations. Their self-satisfaction is too contemptuous of humanity. 

 But we may be assured that to passionate and miserable 

 people, writhing under the merciless curb of political restraint, 

 and out of whom, when forcibly intermixed with the crimina 

 classes, grow Internationalists, Socialists, and Nihilists, these 

 doctrines are no abstractions, but most tremendous realities. 

 They cannot, in their pitiable circumstances, but grasp at any 

 straw that seems to give a chance of a happier existence. And 

 they will act, while the professors are talking. Governments 

 which see this will, as a matter of course, interfere with the pro- 

 mulgation of those doctrines; and, as not even the most 

 enlightened among them is capable of drawing Virchow's line, 

 the just freedom of science will suffer for the vainglorious liber- 

 ties of the Scientists. If this so-called science threatens society, 

 society will play the mischief with science itself. 



In recording the death of our venerable and distinguished 

 fellow-colonist, the Rev. W. B. Clarke, F.K.S., F.R.G.S., &c., I 

 have a melancholy satisfaction in bearing my personal testimony 

 to the wonderful kindness, I may almost say, eagerness, with 

 which he was always ready to assist the investigations of others, 

 in spite of frequent disappointments and unmerited slights. It 

 is unnecessary, in this place, and before this audience, to dwell 

 upon his lifelong devotion to science, and the services, which, by 

 his explorations and writings, he has rendered to this community, 



