DARWIN. 141 



Belfast in the same year: so that a thoroughly awakened 

 attention was given to this new work from Darwin's pen. 

 The public and the scientific world learnt to appreciate 

 yet more keenly his varied talent, his long patience, his 

 reserve of power ; and thence dated very definitely a 

 general appreciation of the fundamental unity of the 

 animal and plant kingdoms, seeing that the salient 

 faculties of digestion, of purposive locomotion, of rapid 

 communication and consentaneous action were no longer 

 restricted to animals, but were possessed in a high 

 degree by plants also. Eager followers soon brought 

 forward further proofs of unity of functions in the two 

 kingdoms, and of reciprocal combinations between them, 

 and now no one in the slightest degree acquainted with 

 modern biology doubts that life is at bottom one phe- 

 nomenon, shared equally and manifested in essentially 

 the same modes by the living substance of plant and 

 animal alike. 



Following " Insectivorous Plants" came " The Effects 

 of Cross and Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable King- 

 dom," in 1876. Darwin had led the way in the study of 

 this subject by his book on Orchids, and his lead had 

 been excellently followed by Hildebrand, Hermann 

 Miiller, Sir John Lubbock, and others. The path having 

 been indicated, it had appeared comparatively easy for 

 botanists to follow it up. But there yet remained a region 

 of experimental inquiry which it required Darwin's 

 patience and ingenuity to master and to expound con- 

 clusively. Although it might be practically granted that 

 natural selection developed a process because advantage 

 was gained by it, was it possible to demonstrate that 



