404 British Association. 



cially those vital tendencies of allied agents. — Mr. Lubbock 

 expressed his willingness to accept tbe Darwinian hypothesis in 

 the absence of any better. He would, however, express his con- 

 viction, that time was not an essential element in these changes. 

 Time alone produce no change. — Dr. Hooker, being called upon 

 by the President to state his views of the botanical aspect of the 

 question, observed, that the Bishop of Oxford having asserted 

 that all men of science were hostile to Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, 

 — whereas he himself was favourable to it, — he could not pre- 

 sume to address the audience as a scientific authority. As, how- 

 ever, he had been asked for his opinion, he would briefly give it. 

 In the first place, his Lordship, in his eloquent address, had, as it 

 appeared to him, completely misunderstood Mr. Darwin's hypo- 

 thesis : his Lordship intimated that this maintained the doctrine 

 of the transmutation of existing species one into another, and had 

 confounded this with that of the successive development of pes- 

 cies by variation and natural selection. The first of these doc- 

 trines was so wholly opposed to the facts, reasonings, and results 

 of Mr. Darwin's work, that he could not conceive how any one 

 who had read it could make such a mistake, — the whole book, 

 indeed, being a protest against that doctrine. Then, again, with 

 regard to the general phenomena of species, he understood his 

 Lordship to affirm that these did not present characters that 

 should lead careful and philosophical naturalists to f?ivour Mr. 

 Darwin's views. To this assertion Dr. Hooker's experience of 

 the Vegetable Kingdom was diametrically opposed. He consi- 

 dered that at least one half of the known kinds of plants were 

 disposable in groups, of which the species were connected by 

 varying characters common to all in that group, and sensibly 

 differing in some individuals only of each species ; so much so 

 that, if each group be likened to a cobweb, and one species be 

 supposed to stand in the centre of that web, its varying charac- 

 ters might be compared to the radiating and concentric threads, 

 when the other species would be represented by the points of 

 union of these ; in short, that the general characteristic of orders^ 

 genera, and species amongst plants differred in degrees only from 

 those of varieties, and afforded the strongest countenance to Mr. 

 Darwin's hypothesis. As regarded his own acceptation of Mr. 

 Darwin's views, he expressly disavowed having adopted them as 

 a ©reed. He knew no creeds in scientific matters. He had early 

 begun the study of natural science under the idea that species 



