PRESlbENT's ADDRESS. 219 



results — first, of an inherent impulse in the forms of life to 

 advance in definite times, through grades of organisation termi- 

 nating in the highest Dicotyledons and Mammalia ; secondly, of 

 external i)hysical circumstances, operating and re-acting upon the 

 central impulse to produce the requisite peculiarities of exterior 

 organisation." Such flimsy speculations were soon shattered by 

 the sledge-hammers of Professor Sedgwick and other geologists, 

 and meanwhile the subject had dropped from notice till Mr. 

 Wollaston published his interesting M^ork on the " Variation of 

 Species," and two years since, Messrs Darwin and Wallace, in their 

 communications to the LinucTan Society, advanced views which 

 prepared u's for Mr. Darwin's recent work. The style is fascin- 

 ating, the candour and frankness with which objections are stated 

 must disarm declamation, and yet I must confess to having been 

 somewhat startled by Mr. Darwin's conclusion, that "organs in a 

 rudimentary condition plainly show that an early progenitor has 

 the organ in a fully developed state." " I believe," says he, " that 

 animals have descended from, at most, only four or five progenitors, 

 and plants from an equal or a lesser number." "Analogy would 

 lead me one step further — viz., to the belief that all animals and 

 plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy 

 may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless, all living things have 

 much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal 

 vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and 

 reproduction." " Therefore, I should infer from analogy that pro- 

 bably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth 

 have descended from some primordial form, into which life was 

 first breathed." Mr. Darwin predicts, from this tremendous con- 

 clusion, that classification will prove to be merely a series of 

 genealogies. To support his theory, he argues from the natural 

 variations which occur in our present forms, and enters upon 

 natural selection, the struggle for existence, hybridism, instinct, 

 embryology, and geographical distribution and geological succes- 

 sion, and lays much stress on the imperfection of the geologic 

 record. I cannot help thinking that he draws very largely upon 

 the inference from ignorance, and sometimes forgets that we need 

 a second instance to begin an induction. Still, his work is the 



