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VI. 



ADDEESS. 



INOEGANIC EVOLUTION. 



By the President, John Morison, M.D., D.P.H., M.E.C.S., 



F.G.S. 



Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting at Watford, 2Gth March, 1906. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, — 



The subject to which I wish to direct your attention this 

 evening is, I think, of absolutely surpassing interest. I cannot 

 pretend in any way to do justice to it. The question of Inorganic 

 Evolution is not only exceedingly difl&cult, but the subject is so 

 vast that I cannot do more than, as it were, merely skim round 

 the outer edge of it and pick out here and there matters which 

 I think are of importance and may be of interest. I trust, then, 

 that you will bear with me and not be too critical ; and also that 

 you will pardon all imperfections and omissions. 



Some faint and glimmering idea of the doctrine of Evolution, 

 which is that all the existing species of plants and animals 

 which we find on the earth were originally derived from one or 

 from a few primaeval forms, seems to have dawned upon the 

 minds of some of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers ; 

 and some such shadowy notion may have floated through the 

 brains of the sages of the Nile or the wise men of Shiimer and 

 Accad ; but it was not till the eighteenth century of our era that 

 naturalists began seriously to question the traditional belief that 

 each individual species came into existence some 6,000 years ago 

 by a separate creative fiat, and had remained essentially the same 

 ever since. Several thinking naturalists at that time, amongst 

 them Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin, promulgated theories of 

 some kind of evolution, which were received for the most part 

 with ridicule and scorn. Lord Monboddo, a learned and very 

 eccentric Scotch judge, was held up to derision for asserting that 

 men might possibly be descended from monkeys. He is alluded 

 to in the notes to Boswell's ' Life of Johnson ' as having 

 " exposed himself to much deserved ridicule by his whimsical 

 speculations relative to a supposed afiinity between the human 

 race and the monkey tribe." It was not until the year 1858 

 that the great Darwin, the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, after 

 20 years of laborious research and patient study, and the famous 

 naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, an illustrious veteran who 

 is still amongst us, full of years and honours, enunciated 



