LINNEAN SOCIETY Ol' LONDON. XIX 



communities has been confounded with that passive and figurative 

 struggle between species which he has so graphically depicted. Both 

 are observed in nature : the former, more evident to the senses, usually 

 takes place between individuals or communities widely distant in the 

 scale of organized beings ; the latter, between species or races the 

 most closely allied. So again, in the criticisms of the proposition 

 that characters selected are only su'*h as are " good for the being," 

 I observe that this expression is frequently supposed to be restricted 

 to the immediate material benefit of the individual — without con- 

 sidering that it is meant to include any modification, however trifling, 

 which of itself or through other properties with which it is in some 

 mysterious manner connected contributes directly or indirectly to 

 the escape from destruction or to the facilities of multiphcation and 

 dispersion of the 7nce. I do not, however, "wish to infer that better 

 terms than any of the above could have been chosen, but only to 

 insist that in their use we must never forget that they are figurative, 

 not direct. 



With regard to the process of verification or refutation of the Dar- 

 winian hypothesis by actual investigation, there has not been time 

 yet for much progTess. Mr. Darwin has not yet published those 

 detailed evidences of his propositions which might give to fresh ob- 

 servers a fair starting-point, and it is only from naturahsts who have 

 long given up their minds to similar subjects that we can for some 

 time expect anything important for or against his views. "What has 

 as yet been published of any merit, as far as I am aware, is more or 

 less in their favour. Sir C, Lyell's already celebrated work on the 

 Geological Eridences of the Antiquity of Man has now been duly 

 appreciated by most naturalists. It would be presumptuous in me 

 to dwell upon the merits of the most important portion, the expo- 

 sition of the Glacial theory ; for the details are purely geological, 

 although in its general results it bears strongly on botanical and 

 zoological theories of geographical dispersion. The accumulated 

 evidences of man's antiquity which give the title to the work are 

 also rather geological and ethnological than biological, their chief 

 bearing upon the present question being the throwing so much fui*- 

 ther back in point of time the probability of the human species 

 having the same limits of variabUity as in the present day. The 

 third portion, relating directly to the Darwinian hypothesis, is chiefly 

 argumentative, but full of considerations of great value, derived from 

 his intimate acquaintance with geological facts connected with them. 

 Some others may require further explanation — when, for instance 

 (p. 446), it is assumed that aberrant and highly specialized types 



