114 J. HOPKINSON — Al^'NIYEESAEY ADDRESS: 



intelligent schoolboy may read with interest and pleasure, it has 

 been translated into every European language, and its sale in 

 England alone has reached nearly fifty thousand copies. It is 

 a work which scarcely admits of criticism, for Darwin has in it 

 criticised his own conclusions more rigorously than any other man 

 could do. This he was enabled to do by having during many 

 years made a note of every "published fact, new observation, or 

 thought " opposed to his general results. 



Nevertheless his views were at first accepted by a few advanced 

 thinkers only, — by such men as Sir Joseph Hooker, Sir Charles 

 Lyell, Professor Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and Darwin's own 

 true knight, Alfred Russel Wallace. The necessary revolution 

 in scientific thought required time for its development, and until 

 nine years had elapsed since the publication of the ' Origin of 

 Species,' it could not have been asserted, as it then was by Sir 

 Joseph Hooker, in his presidential address to the British Associa- 

 tion, that Natural Selection "is an accepted doctrine with almost 

 every philosophical naturalist." Eourteen years later, the views 

 promulgated in the ' Origin of Species ' had gained so many con- 

 verts, that, at a meeting of the Biological Society of Washington 

 held as a memorial of Darwin about a month after his death, 

 Dr. Theodore Gill spoke of his views as being ' ' universally ac- 

 cepted" and "taken as the recognised platform of biologists;" 

 and Dr. J. W. Powell said that he had demonstrated the laws 

 of biologic evolution " in a manner so masterly that there lives 

 not in the world a working biologist, a scientific man engaged 

 in this field of research, who has not, directly or indirectly, 

 accepted his great conclusions." 



During the last few months of 1859, Darwin is fully occupied in 

 preparing a new edition of the ' Origin,' and with an enormous 

 correspondence. In January, 1860, he begins to arrange his notes 

 for his work on the ' Variation of Animals and Plants under 

 Domestication,' published in 1868 (second edition, 1875). In 

 July, 1861, he commences his work on the 'Fertilisation of 

 Orchids,' published in 1862 (second edition, 1877), but he had 

 begun to study the "cross-fertilisation of flowers by the aid of 

 insects" in 1839. In 1868 he begins to write his 'Descent of 

 Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,' published in 1871 

 (second edition, 1874), but he had begun to collect notes on the 

 subject in 1837 or 1838, as soon as he had become "convinced 

 that species were mutable productions." On the birth of his first 

 child, in December, 1839, he commences to make notes on the first 

 dawn of expressions, continuing to study the subject for more than 



