MODERN EVOLUTION. 



141 



For to have hit upon a theory which interprets so 

 large a question as the origin and causes of modifica- 

 tion of life-forms; to keep on turning it over and 

 over again in the mind for twenty long years; to 

 spend the working hours of every day in collection 

 and verification of. facts for and against it; and then 

 to have another man launching a "bolt from the 

 blue " in the shape of a paper with exactly the same 

 theory, might well disturb even a philosopher of 

 Darwin's serenity. 



However, both Hooker and Lyell had read his 

 sketch a dozen years before, and it was arranged by 

 them, not as considering claims of priority, which 

 have too often been occasion of unworthy wrangling, 

 but in the " interests of science generally," that an 

 abstract of Darwin's manuscript should be read with 

 Wallace's paper at a meeting of the Linnsean Society 

 on the ist of July, 1858. The full title of the joint com- 

 munication was On the Tendency of Species to form 

 Varieties, and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and 

 Species by Natural Selection. Sir Joseph Hooker, 

 describing the gathering, says that " the interest ex- 

 cited was intense, but the subject was too novel and 

 too ominous for the old school to enter the lists be- 

 fore armouring. After the meeting it was talked 

 over with bated breath. Lyell's approval, and per- 

 haps, in a small way mine, as his lieutenant in the 

 affair, rather overawed the Fellows, who would 

 otherwise have flown out against the doctrine. We 

 had, too, the vantage ground of being familiar with 



