588 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1018. 



ress of scientific organization, an influence which assuredly was not 

 sectarian nor exercised for party purposes. While the club, though 

 bound up with the Darwinian movement, did not comprise the origi- 

 nators of that new doctrine, Lyell and Darwin himself — on account 

 of their health and absorption in special pursuits at a distance from 

 the town — it also, for a similar reason, did not include Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, who had lately returned to England from his long sojourn 

 in the tropics. His name can never be forgotten as that of one who, 

 independently of Darwin and while exploring in the tropics, con- 

 ceived and stated the identical theory of the origin of species by the 

 natural selection of favored varieties in " the struggle for existence," 

 which had been more fully worked out, though held back from 

 publication, by the elder naturalist. Wallace, as all the world knows, 

 gladly gave all credit in the matter to Darwin, and contributed by 

 his original observations and arguments, and by the lucid exposition 

 given in a series of invaluable books for a period of more than forty 

 years, to the establishment of Darwin's doctrine of organic evolution. 

 Wallace held himself very much aloof from the London whirlpool, 

 finding happiness and full occupation for his long life in scientific 

 work. 



It is perhaps a mere coincidence, but in any case a very important 

 fact, that we have a series of remarkable volumes giving in an un- 

 usually complete form the Life and Letters of Lyell, of Darwin, and 

 of Huxley. Happily they wrote many letters, fortunately preserved 

 for publication, in which their scientific work and the development 

 of their views, as well as delightful revelations of character, of 

 their tastes, their likes and dislikes, and of their heroic struggles 

 and daily occupations, are recorded. These volumes can perhaps 

 hardly be called " biographies " ; they are the materials for consid- 

 ered well-balanced biography. They have been gathered by loving 

 hands and connected by a thread of narrative and explanatory notes. 

 Now we have a similar Life and Letters of Hooker, the material'for 

 which has been arranged by his widow, and presented in due order 

 by Mr. Leonard Huxley, who had already done for his father's 

 memory what he has here, with skill and experience, done for that 

 of his father's closest friend. The letters here given, taken with 

 those of Darwin and Huxley and Lyell, interweave with and com- 

 plete one another, giving a remarkably close picture of the growth 

 of a great scientific theory. 



AVe have indicated in bald outline the place which Hooker occupied 

 in the little group of naturalists who established, in the later half 

 of the nineteenth century, the doctrine of organic evolution. Since 

 we are here concerned with the story of his lire and work, it is now 

 time to state more specifically what was his actual contribution to 

 the science of his time, and then to point out, as these volumes of 



