1868. | The President’s Address. 505 
rationale of the whole was demonstrated, and he finally showed, not 
only how nature might operate in bringing these complicated 
modifications into harmonious operation, but how through insect 
agency she does do this, and also why she does it. 
“Tt is impossible even to enumerate here the many important 
generalizations that have followed from these and other papers of 
Mr. Darwin’s on the fertilization of plants; some that appear to be 
commonplace at first sight, are really the most subtle, and like 
many other apparent commonplaces, are what, somehow, never 
occur to commonplace minds ; as, for instance, that all plants with 
conspicuously coloured flowers, or powerful odours, or honeyed 
secretions, are fertilized by insects ;—all with inconspicuous flowers 
and especially such as have pendulous anthers, or incoherent pollen, 
are fertilized by the wind: whence he infers that, before honey- 
feeding insects existed, the vegetation of our globe could not have 
been ornamented with bright-coloured flowers, but consisted of 
such plants as pines, oaks, grasses, nettles, &c.” 
Mr. Darwin’s recent work on ‘Animals and Plants under Domes- 
tication,’ showed a wonderful power of utilizing the waste materials 
of other men’s laboratories, as Mr. James Paget had remarked— 
and this power was, Dr.’ Hooker considered, most characteristic of the 
author. As to the theory of Pangenesis, Dr. Hooker endorsed 
the opinion of the President of the Linnzan Society, that this suppo- 
sition “explains some facts and is not incompatible with others ; it 
will be admitted by many as a provisional hypothesis to be further 
tested, and to be discarded only when a more plausible one shall be 
brought forward.” 
It was time to ask now, what progress the Darwinian theory 
had made in men’s estimation, ten years having elapsed since the 
publication of the Origin of Species. ‘The Athenzeum’ very recently 
assured its readers that the theory was a matter of the past, and that 
Mr. Darwin’s last book only contained a reasseveration of his guesses 
founded on the variations of pigeons. Dr. Hooker emphatically 
denied the truth of these statements. He told how the work had 
been translated into every European language, and passed through 
many editions, and that the rising naturalists were, perhaps, rather 
too eager and ardent in their acceptance of the theory. The 
scientific writers who had publicly rejected the theory were few in 
number, and had been admirably controverted by Mr. Darwin's true 
knight, Alfred Wallace, in this Journal and elsewhere. Above all 
that noble man, Sir Charles Lyell, had adopted the theory in his 
tenth edition of the ‘ Principles,’ not afraid to plant his work on 
this basis and yielding his old objections to what he now believed 
the truth. 
After discussing the Astronomical objections urged against 
Darwin’s theory in the ‘ North British Review,’ and pointing out 
