374 



It seldom ' occurred to any of these writers to take up the 

 questions which draw the attention of Naturalists at the present 

 day; questions as to the evolution of species and varieties — the 

 causes of variation — the relationship between the animals of a 

 particular country, and the same animals as met with in other 

 countries — the local influences which operate, sometimes on the 

 structure, sometimes on the habits of certain species, giving them 

 a local character, often to the extent of causing them to be con- 

 sidered distinct from others, which do not possess this local 

 character, though in all essential respects the same — the causes 

 which act in confining some species to very limited districts, while 

 others nearly allied are found ranging over a whole country ; in a 

 word, questions arising out of that interaction which is constantly 

 going on between every living creature and its surroundings as 

 regards both the organic and the inorganic world, giving rise to 

 changes, not perceivable at first, but tending ultimately to an 

 entire alteration of the Fauna of any particular country or district. 



For these questions had not at that time been brought forward. 

 It is only since the appearance of Darwin's important work on the 

 "Origin of Species" in 1859, that they have offered themselves for 

 solution ; or if thought upon by a few before that time, that they 

 have become a general study, opening up indeed quite a new branch 

 of Science — Philosophical Biology. 



Professor Huxley, speaking of that work, says — " In a dozen 

 years it has worked as complete a revolution in biological science 

 as the " Principia" did in astronomy — and it has done so, because, 

 in the words of Helmholtz, it contains " an essentially new creative 

 thought ;"* and a writer in a late number of " Nature," alluding to 

 this revolution, remarks that it " has augmented the number of 

 special problems in such enormous proportions that Biology is now 

 completely at a loss to solve all these problems by the aid of the 

 means placed hitherto at its disposal." It is this felt difiiculty 

 which led to a suggestion, at the Edinburgh meeting of the British 

 Association in 1871, that Zoological Laboratories or Observatories, 

 which is the subject of the article in " Nature" just mentioned, 

 should be established at suitable stations in difierent parts of the 

 ' * Contemp. Rev., Nov. 1871, p. 443. 



