Darwinian Epoch (1858 to the present day). 



Living as we do in the days when most of us test the result of our 

 work by the theory of Evolution, it is not necessary to say anything of 

 my own on the early development and spread of our thoughts and 

 ideas on this subject. The following paragraph in Professor Newton's 

 article embodies all that is necessary to say on this head : — 



''There is no need to enter into details of the history of Evolution; but the 

 annalist in every branch of Biology must record the eventful 1st of July, 1858, when 

 the now celebrated views of Darwin and Wallace were first laid before the scientific 

 world, and must also notice the appearance towards the end of the following j-ear of 

 the former's ' Origin of Species/ which has effected the greatest revolution of human 

 thought in this or perhaps in any other century. The majority of biologists who had 

 schooled themselves on other principles were, of course, slow to embrace the new 

 doctrine ; but their hesitation was only the natural consequence of the caution which 

 their scientific training enjoined. A few there were who felt as though scales had 

 suddenly dropped from their eyes, when greeted by the idea conveyed in the now 

 familiar phrase ' natural selection ; ' but even those who had hitherto believed, and 

 still continued to believe, in the sanctity of '■ species,' at once perceived that their life- 

 long study had undergone a change, that their old position was seriously threatened 

 b}' a perilous siege, and that to make it good they must find new means of defence. 

 Many bravely maintained their posts, and for them not a word of blame ought to be 

 expressed. Some few pretended, though the contrary was notorious, that they had 

 always been on the side of the new philosophy, so far as they allowed it to be philo- 

 sophy at all, and for them hardly a word of blame is too severe. Others after due 

 deliberation, as became men who honestly desired the truth and nothing but the truth, 

 yielded wholly, or almost wholly, to arguments which they gradually found to be irre- 

 sistible. But, leaving generalities apart, and restricting ourselves to what is here our 

 proper business, there was possibly no branch of Zoology in which so many of the best 

 informed, and consequently the most advanced, of its workers sooner accepted the 

 principles of Evolution than Ornithology, and of course the effect upon its study was 

 very marked. iSew spirit was given to it. Ornithologists now felt that they had 

 something before them that was really worth investigating. Questions of Affinity, and 

 the details of Geographical Distribution, were endowed with a real interest, in com- 

 parison with which any interest that had hitherto been taken was a trifling pastime. 

 Classification assumed a wholly different aspect. It had up to this time been little 

 more than a shuffling of cards, the ingenious arrangement of counters in a pretty 

 pattern. Henceforward it was to be the serious study of the workings of Natm-e in 

 producing- the beings we see around us from beings more or less unlike them, that had 

 existed in bygone ages, and had been the parents of a varied and varying offspring — our 

 fellow-creatures of to-day. Classification for the first time was something more than 

 the expression of a fancy. Not that it had not also its imaginative side. Men's minds 

 began to figure to themselves the original type of some well-marked genus or family 

 of birds. They could even discern dimly some generalized stock whence had descended 

 whole groups that now differed strangely in habits and appearance — their discernment 

 aided, may be, by some isolated form which yet retained undeniable traces of a primi- 

 tive structure. More dimly still, visions of what the first bird may have been like 

 could be reasonably entertained ; and passing even to a higher antiquity, the Eeptiliau 

 parent whence all Birds have sprung was brought within reach of man's consciousness. 

 But, relieved as it may be by reflexions of this kind — dreams some may perhaps still 



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