April, 1909] THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 203 



which he had dealt with his ideas to that of Darwin. The idea 

 had come to him in a sudden flash of insight, thought out in a 

 few hours, written down with such illustrations and developments 

 as occurred to him at the moment, copied on thin letter-paper 

 and sent off to Darwin, all within one week. He therefore con- 

 tended that Darwin should ever be recognized as the sole and 

 undisputed discoverer and patient investigator of the great law 

 of " natural selection " in all its far-reaching consequences. 

 Then he went on to consider why, of all the great men who had 

 given attention to the question, he and Darwin had alone hit 

 upon a solution which seemed to be a satisfying one to a large 

 number of able men to-day, and attributed it to the fact that both 

 he and Darwin had been ardent beetle-hunters, and the constant 

 comparison of specimens for new species and varieties had so 

 trained them to observe slight peculiarities of habits, &c., and 

 both being of a speculative turn of mind, they were constantly led 

 to think upon the " why " and the " how " of all the wonderful 

 variety of nature. Finally, he said, when their minds were well 

 stored with the results of personal observation their attention had 

 been directed to theories set forth by Malthus in his " Principles 

 of Population," and though Darwin read the book two years after 

 his return from his celebrated voyage, and he had read it before 

 he went abroad, that influence, combined with their experience 

 as collectors, doubtless led to practically the same conclusion, 

 and he thought that possibly Darwin's precursors in the same 

 line of investigation had failed through lacking that special turn 

 of mind that makes the collector and the species-man. He con- 

 cluded by saying that he had long since come to see " that no 

 one deserves either praise or blame for the ideas that come to 

 him, but only for the actions resulting therefrom. . . ." 



Sir Joseph Hooker was then called upon to receive the next 

 medal, and, in returning his thanks for the honour done him, 

 entered into details of his relations and correspondence v/ith 

 Darwin, Wallace, and Lyell,'and said it was somewhat remarkable 

 that the fact of a meeting having been held on ist July, 1858, 

 was due to the death of the eminent botanist Robert Brown, a 

 vice-president and councillor of the society. For this reason the 

 ordinary meeting of 17th June was postponed, and a special 

 meeting called for ist July to fill the vacancy. Advantage was 

 taken of this meeting by Sir Charles Lyell and himself to bring 

 forward the comniunication by Darwin and Wallace, which 

 otherwise would not have seen the light till September of that 

 year, as they had not been included in the notice paper for the 

 June meeting. 



Similar medals were also presented to Professor Haeckel, 

 Prof. A. Weismann, Prof. E. Strasburger, Dr. F. Gallon, F.R.S., 

 and Sir E. Ray Lankester, K.C.B., F.R.S., F.L.S. The medal, 



