452 CHARLES DARWIN. 



In this Academy, where the rise and progress of Darwinian evolu- 

 tion have been attentively marked and its bearings critically discussed, 

 and at this date, when the derivative origin of animal and vegetable 

 species is the accepted belief of all of us who study them, it would 

 be superfluous to give any explanatory account of these now familiar 

 writings ; nor, indeed, would the pages which we are accustomed to 

 consecrate to the memory of our recently deceased Associates allow of 

 it. Let us note in passing that the succeeding volumes of the series 

 may be ranked in two classes, one of which is much more widely 

 known than the other. One class is of those which follow up the ar- 

 gument for the origination of species through descent with modification, 

 or which widen its base and illustrate the modus operandi of Natural 

 Selection. Such are the two volumes on " Domesticated Animals and 

 Cultivated Plants," illustrating Variation, Inheritance, Reversion, 

 Interbreeding, &c, ; the volume on the " Descent of Man, and Selec- 

 tion in Relation to Sex," — which extended the hypothesis to its logi- 

 cal limits, — and that "On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and 

 the Lower Animals," published in 1872, which may be regarded as the 

 last of this series. Since then Mr, Darwin appears to have turned 

 from the highest to the lower forms of life, and to have entered upon 

 the laborious cultivation of new and special fields of investigation, 

 which, although prosecuted on the lines of his doctrine and vivified by 

 its ideas, might seem to be only incidentally connected with the general 

 argument. But it will be found that all these lines are convergent. 

 Nor were these altogether new studies. The germ of the three vol- 

 umes upon the Relation of Insects to Flowers and its far-reaching 

 consequences, is a little paper, published in the year 1858, " On the 

 Agency of Bees in the Fertilization of Papilionaceous Flowers, and 

 on the Crossing of Kidney Beans " ; the first edition of the volume 

 on " The various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilized by 

 Insects" appeared in 1862, thus forming the second volume of the 

 Avhole series ; and the two volumes " On the Effects of Cross- and 

 Self-Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom," and "The Different 

 Forms of Flowers on Plants of the same Species," which, along with 

 the new edition of " The Fertilization of Orchids," were all published 

 in 1876 and 1877, originated in two or three remarkable papers con- 

 tributed to the Journal of the Linncan Society in 1862 and 1863, 

 but are supplemented by additional and protracted experiments. The 

 volume on *' Insectivorous Plants," and the noteworthy conclusions in 

 respect to the fundamental unity, and therefore common source, of 

 vegetable and animal life, grew out of an observation which the 



