LINNEAN" SOCIETY OF LOKDON. 75 



Bentham readily accepted ; and bis old logical training soon 

 enabled him to reconstruct bis position and to revindicate, as it 

 seems to me on unassailable ground, tbe true meaning and status 

 of taxonomic science. But he did not do this without a severe 

 struggle, of ^Ybicb be has given an interesting account in a letter 

 to i'rancis Darwin*, written May 30 of tbe year before bis 

 death : — 



"Ibave always been throughout one of bis (Mr. Darwin's) 

 most sincere admirers, and fully adopted his theories and con- 

 clusions, notwithstanding tbe severe pain and disappointment 

 they at first occasioned me. On the day that his celebrated 

 paper was read at the Linnean Society, .Inly 1st, 1S58, a long 

 paper of mine bad been set down for reading, in which, in com- 

 menting on the ' British Flora,' I bad collected a number of 

 observations and facts illustrating what I then believed to be a 

 fixity of species, however difficult it might be to assign their 

 limits, and showing a tendency of abuormal forms produced by 

 cultivation or otherwise to withdraw within those original limits 

 when left to themselves. Most fortunately my paper bad to 

 give way to Mr. Darwin's ; and when once that was read, I felt 

 bound to defer mine for reconsideration ; I began to entertain 

 doubts on the subject ; and on tbe appearance of tbe ' Origin of 

 Species ' I was forced, however reluctantly, to give up my long 

 cherished convictions, the results of much labour and study ; 

 and I cancelled all that part of my paper which urged original 

 fi.'sity." 



It will, I think, be useful to recall the position upon which 

 Bentham, in bis Address f to the Society, jjut the basis of modern 

 taxonomic science : — 



" It must, in the first place, be remembered that the races 

 whose relations to each other we study can only be present to 

 our minds in an abstract form. In treating of a genus, a species, 

 or a variety-, it is not enough to have one individual before our 

 eyes ; we must combine the properties belonging to the whole 

 I'ace we are considering abstracted from those peculiar to sub- 

 ordinate races or individuals. We cannot form a correct idea of 

 a species from a single individual, nor of a genus from a single 

 one of its species. We can no more set u]) a typical species than 

 a typical individual." 



It follows from this that taxonomy is only a kind of generali- 

 zation based on accurate objective observations. This is the 

 essential note of Bentham's work. He was always animated 

 with the judicial spirit. It was the evidence of facts wliicb be 

 required ; and be was impatient of mere speculation about them. 

 But he agreed that taxonomic generalizations are subject to the 

 same law as all others, and must admit, if necessary, of enlarge- 



* 'Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,' vol. ii. p. 293. 

 t 1871, pp. 5, G. 



