690 



DARWINIAN THEORY 



appeared, as Variation of Animals and Plants 

 under Domestication ( see VARIATION ) ; but in 

 Fertilisation of Orchids, Forms of Flowers, Insect- 

 ivorous Plants, Climbing Plants, Movement in 

 Plants, we have a series which not only greatly 

 developed Darwin's favourite study of adaptations, 

 and with it enormously strengthened his general 

 theory, but gave to the arid field of botany the 

 interest and freshness of a new intellectual Spring 

 (see BOTANY). Again, the very difficulties which 

 he felt to be presented to his theory by the com- 

 plex phenomena of bee and ant society led him 

 onwards, till he reached the problems of mind and 

 language ; the obvious and burning question of the 

 origin of man had -also to be faced, and thus we 

 had i\\&Descent of Man and the Expression of tht 

 Emotions. 



Before conclusion, justice demands, if not dis- 

 cussion, at least mention of some of the more im- 

 portant criticisms which have been urged against 

 Darwin's theory. That which Darwin himself 

 seems to have felt as most serious was made by 

 Fleeming Jenkin, who laid stress on the tendency 

 to swamping any individual variation, however 

 advantageous, through intercrossing. Mr Mivart's 

 Genesis of Species next engaged him most ; but 

 Darwin's replies to these and other criticisms up to 

 1872 will be found in the final edition of the Origin 

 of Species. In his essay in Darwin's Life, Huxley 

 says, ' I venture to affirm, that so far as all my 

 knowledge goes, all the ingenuity and all the 

 learning of hostile critics have not enabled them to 

 adduce a single fact of which it can be said this is 

 irreconcilable with the Darwinian theory ; ' while 

 Mr Ray Lankestev still more recently assures us 

 that ' since its first publication in 1859 the history 

 of Darwin's theory has been one of continuous and 

 decisive conquest, so that at the present day it is 

 universally accepted as the central, all-embracing 

 doctrine of zoological and botanical science.' 



As a matter of fact, however, this 'universal 

 acceptance' is not without its universally dis- 

 tributed exceptions. Some of Darwin's contem- 

 poraries have withheld their adhesion e.g. Virchow 

 in Germany, Owen and Cleland in Britain, 

 and the older French naturalists ; nor can the 

 critical and controversial writings of Mivart, the 

 Duke of Argyll, Samuel Butler, and others, be thus 

 wholly ignored. Constructive criticism is also 

 busy. On one hand certainly we have the ultra- 

 Darwinian speculations of Weisrnann, warmly 

 accepted by Lankester and others ; but on the 

 other, attempts are again being made, and with 

 increasing frequency, to restate the theory of evolu- 

 tion more or less completely in non-Darwinian 

 terms. Thus, following up the doubt which occa- 

 sionally troubled Mr Darwin's recent years, that he 

 had assigned too little importance to the modifying 

 factors of use and disuse, of environment, &c., we 

 have Mr Spencer re-entering the field ; in America 

 an active Neo-Lamarckian school has also arisen, 

 which lacks neither knowledge nor thoughtfulness ; 

 in Germany we owe new constructive efforts to 

 Niigeli and Semper, and more recently to Eimer ; 

 while in Britain, complementary hypotheses have 

 been propounded by Romanes, Sutton, Gulick, 

 Geddes, &c. But such proposed positive contribu- 

 tions to the evolutionary theory fall rather to be 

 treated under EVOLUTION. 



See BIOLOGY, BOTANY, EVOLUTION, ENVIRONMENT, 

 HEREDITY, GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, ZOOLOGY, and 

 other articles. Besides the works of Darwin himself, 

 and those of Alfred Russell Wallace (from Natural Selec- 

 tion in 1870 to Darwinism in 1889), with the special 

 treatises referred to under the above-mentioned and 

 minor articles (e.g. FERTILISATION), see F. Darwin's Life 

 of Charles Darwin ; also minor Lives by Grant Allen 

 and Bettany. Of other expository literature may be 



mentioned Haeckel's Generelle Morphologic and Natural 

 History of Creation; Huxley's Lay Sermons, American 

 Addresses, Science and Culture, Anatomy of Invcrtebrated 

 Animals; also his essay On the Reception of the Ori<nn 

 >f Species in Darwin's Life, vol. ii. ; Obituary Notice of 

 Charles Darwin in Proc. Hoy. Soc. (Lond. 1888) ; and 

 Struyyle for Existence, a Programme (Nineteenth Century, 

 L888). Weismann's Studies in the Theory of Descent 

 [1880-82), and for more recent developments his subse- 

 quent papers ( see HEREDITY and WEISMANN ), must also 

 be noted. Romanes' Scientific Evidences of Organic 

 Evolution, Lankester's Degeneration (both Nature 

 ser es ), Schmidt's Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism, 

 Fiske's Darwinism and other Essays, are examples in 

 English of an abundant and more popular literature, in 

 which the writings of Mr Grant Allen and Dr A. Wilson 

 are also specially known, and which is likewise abundant 

 in Germany, France, and Italy. 



Of controversial writings may be cited Mivart's Genesis 

 of Species, Lessons from -Nature, &c.; the Duke of Argyll's 

 Unity of Nature, as well as the review articles of both 

 writers. See also Butler's Evolution, Old and New, and 

 Luck or Cunning. For the literature of the more con- 

 structive attempts referred to, see EVOLUTION, tor 

 general bibliography Bettany's Life of L'arwin is most 

 accessible ; also Seidlitz, Die Darw. Theoric ( Leip. 1875 ), 

 the Naples Jahresbericht f. Zoologie, and the Zoological 

 Record ; Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin ( 1895 ) ; 

 Poulton, Darwin and Natural Selection (1896). 



Darwin Sound and MOUNT DARWIN are on 

 the SW. side of King Charles's South Land, Tierra 

 del Fuego. The mountain rises 6800 feet. 



Dasent, SIR GEORGE WEBBE, was born in 1820 

 at St Vincent in the West Indies, of which island 

 his father was attorney -general. He was educated 

 at Westminster School and King's College, London; 

 graduated B.A. at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 

 1840; and was called to the bar at the Middle 

 Temple in 1852, in which year also he received his 

 degree of D.C.L. He was for twenty-five years 

 (1845-70) an assistant-editor of the Times, ami 

 married a sister of its editor, Mr Delane. An 

 accomplished linguist, especially in Scandinavian, 

 he acted as examiner in English and modem 

 languages for the Civil Service ; he was a Civil 

 Service Commissioner in 1872-92, was knighted 

 in 1876, and died llth June 1896. Jn 1842 he pub- 

 lished a translation of The Prose or Younger Edda ; 

 which was followed by an essay, ' The Norsemen,' 

 in the Oxford Essays (1858); Popular Tales from 

 the Norse, with an Introductory Essay on the Origin 

 and Diffusion of Popular Tales (1859), and Tales 

 from the Fjeld (1874), both from the Norwegian of 

 Asbjornsen ; translations from the Icelandic of the 

 Saga of Burnt Njal ( 1861 ), and the Story of Gisli, 

 the Outlaw (1866); and an Introduction and Life 

 of Cleasby, prefixed to Vigfusson's completion of 

 Cleasby's unfinished Icelandic-English Dictionary 

 (1874). Sir George Dasent also wrote several fair 

 novels. His famous introduction to Asbjornsen's 

 Popular Tales was a solid contribution to folklore, 

 being an admirable exposition of the Aryan theory 

 of story-transmission as advocated by Grimm and 

 Max Muller. 



Dash, COUNTESS, the name under Avhich 

 Gabrielle Anna Cisterne de Courtiras, Vicomtesse 

 de Saint-Mars, published a series of novels, many 

 of which were readable, if of but slender literary 

 merit. She was born at Poitiers, August 2, 1804, 

 of a noble family, married early, and took to 

 literature for a living after the loss of her pro- 

 perty, writing sometimes as many as five or six 

 novels a year. She died llth September 1872. 

 Her stories deal almost exclusively with the aristo- 

 cratic world and its more or less illegitimate liai- 

 sons. They have a certain brightness and vigour, 

 but lack reality, and are peopled by a crowd of 

 stilted puppets Vather than living men and women. 

 Of her numberless books may only be mentioned 





