1886.] OJO [Rothrock. 



Price, had studied the subject. It is more thau probable that, 

 not only all juries, but many judges might read it with advantage 

 to themselves and to those on trial. 



In July, 1866, he read before the Numismatic and Antiquarian 

 Society of Philadelphia a brief commentary upon some im- 

 portant but now obscure allusions to Revolutionary times, to 

 which he added a short notice of the Pemberton family, which 

 he says was ancient in England before the settlement of Penn- 

 sylvania. 



In 1872 his busy mind was exercised in another direction. 

 This time, upon the phases of modern philosophy, especially such 

 as were attaining a rank luxuriance under the stimulus of the 

 then latest ideas upon evolution. His published criticisms show 

 remarkable acuteness in detection of the weak points in the new 

 lrvpothesis. The facts were many of them strange, the relations 

 of the facts were almost wholly strange: at least they assumed 

 more scientific form and were under a more scientific presenta- 

 tion than ever before. What wonder then that Mr. Price failed, 

 as most others did, to take in the whole subject at the first 

 draught. It is well known that neither Mr. Darwin nor Mr. 

 Spencer comprehended all that their doctrines taught, or even 

 dreamed how widely their conclusions would reach and apply. 

 Evolution itself was slowly evolved out of the best thoughts of 

 the world's scientific leaders. Its propositions were then few, 

 and its corollaries hardly more numerous. Already it has cre- 

 ated* a literature of its own, is as sure as the theory of gravita- 

 tion and not lesa far-reaching. No man accepted more fully 

 than Mr. Price did, in his later years, the abstract idea of evolu- 

 tion. The only question in his mind was, how far can it be con- 

 sidered operative? Here he was judiciously slow in deciding, 

 and it would have been better for science if others had imitated 

 his prudence. The largest task of the next century will be the 

 sifting out and rejecting from the body of science such fancies as 

 have been mistaken for facts and taught accordingly. Mr. Price 



