LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDOK. 69 



irrepressible lougiug- to unravel the mysteries of living nature, to 

 penetrate the shroud wliicli conceals the causes and methods by 

 whicli all the wonders and all tlie diversity, all the beauty, yes, 

 and all the deformity, too, which we see around us in the life of 

 animals and plants have been brought about. 



Against our ignorance on tliese subjects his life was one 

 long battle, and in reading its history and seeing the gradual 

 development of his plan of operations, one is continually reminded 

 of a great strategist directing a vast army spread over a wide 

 and varied field of operations ; now surveying tlie whole at a 

 glance, now pressing on his various forces wherever an opening 

 presents itself anywhere along the line, now carefully scrutinizing 

 the weak and the strong points of every position ; omitting no 

 precaution where danger threatens, now bringing one branch of 

 the forces to bear, followed up and supported, if need be, by 

 others of a different kind, one after another in close and telling 

 array ; masses of tacts, experiments, observations, and arguments 

 thrown in to stop a breach or strengthen any menaced or waver- 

 ing post, and all arranged, grouped, marshalled, and handled with 

 the skill and vigilance with which a successful general handles a 

 living army in the conduct of a great and complicated campaign. 



To all this, most of the work which we others do is but irre- 

 gular guerilla warfare, attacks on isolated points, mere outpost 

 skirmishing, while his was the indefatigable, patient, intermittent 

 toil, conducted in such a manner and on such a scale that it 

 could scarcely fail to secure victory in the end. 



The main victory gained by his work was, as we all know, the 

 destruction of the conception of species as being beyond certain 

 narrow limits fixed and unchangeable, a conception which pre- 

 vailed almost universally before his lime. That this has been 

 gained chiefly by means of Darwin's w'ork and writing, there can 

 be no doubt. Let us admit that others had prepared the way, 

 that the work was carried ou simultaneously by many others 

 also, that if the present generally accepted view is true, it must 

 have made its way if Darwin had not lived or spoken ; I say, 

 grant all this to the fullest, and the fact remains that he was the 

 main agent in the conversion of almost the whole scientific world 

 from one to a totally opposite conception of one of the most 

 important operations of nature. 



Such a revolution as this, with all its momentous consequences 

 to the study of zoology and botany, effected in so short a space 

 of time, is, as has often been said, without a parallel in the 

 history of science, and it is one the full significance of which 

 those who have not lived through it, and been workers at biology 

 in both the pre-Darwiuian and post-Darwinian epochs, must find 

 difficulty in realizing. 



There is, moreover, no doubt but that this rapid conversion 

 was much facilitated by the fascinating nature of the theory of 

 the operation of natural selection in intensifying and fixing 



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