CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. 101 



place will be near to that of another great original thinker, Sir 

 Isaac Newton. 



Appended are a few lines from the pen of Mr. J. .Tenner AVeir. 



On April 19th there passed away from amongst us the greatest 

 naturalist that this and probably any century has produced. 



The writer of this notice has engaged in the pursuit of 

 Natural History for as many years prior to the appearance of 

 ' The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection ' as have 

 elapsed since that work appeared, and has been profoundly 

 imj)ressed by the totally altered aspect which all the phenomena 

 of Nature have presented to most minds, since by that publi- 

 cation a great flood of light has been thrown on the previously 

 hazy doctrine of the evolution of species. For instance, ento- 

 mologists had constantly found moths with one or two pollen 

 masses of an orchid firmly glued to the base of their trunks, 

 and insects had been often exhibited at the meetings of the 

 Entomological Society, and, after examination, had been simply 

 pronounced " cmious," but no deep significance was attached to 

 the fact. 



When Mr. Darwin, in 1862, produced his great work on the 

 'Fertilisation of Orchids,' it appeared that these curious flowers 

 were so shaped as to give a landing-stage to the insect, and the 

 nectar-tube so arranged that the honey could only be reached by 

 the insect pressing against the pollen masses, and causing them 

 to be fixed to the head or trunk in the exact position they should 

 occupy to effect the fertilisation of the next flower visited. Thus 

 other flowers were discovered that could be fertilised by one 

 species of insect only, as the Yucca by Pronuha yuccasella ; this 

 insect has the legs modified so as to enable it to conve}' the 

 pollen from one flower to another. 



How many Lepidoptera are well known to entomologists, 

 belonging to the same genus or to allied genera, which have 

 almost precisely similar markings ; on the doctrine of sphaeroid 

 creation these resemblances were inexplicable, but on the theory 

 of a common origin, with modifications brought about by natural 

 selection, no difiiculty is presented. 



It is not too much to say that Mr. Darwin has, by his 

 contributions to the study of Natural Sciences, completely 



