XIL] THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 259 



may be in a position to say whether this is, or is not, the case ; 

 but in either event they will owe the author of &quot; The Origin of 

 Species&quot; an immense debt of gratitude. We should leave a 

 very wrong impression on the reader s mind if we permitted him 

 to suppose that the value of that work depends wholly on the 

 ultimate justification of the theoretical views which it contains. 

 On the contrary, if they were disproved to-morrow, the book 

 would still be the best of its kind the most compendious state 

 ment of well-sifted facts bearing on the doctrine of species that 

 has ever appeared. The chapters on Variation, on the Struggle 

 for Existence, on Instinct, on Hybridism, on the Imperfection of 

 the Geological Record, on Geographical Distribution, have not 

 only no equals, but, so far as our knowledge goes, no competitors, 

 within the range of biological literature. And viewed as a 

 whole, we do not believe that, since the publication of Von Baer s 

 Researches on Development, thirty years ago, any work has 

 appeared calculated to exert so large an influence, not only on 

 the future of Biology, but in extending the domination of 

 Science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, 

 hardly penetrated. 



