THE ORIGIN OF WALNUTS. 161 



XVII. 



THE ORIGIN OF WALNUTS. 



MR. DARWIN has devoted no small portion of 

 his valuable life to tracing, in two bulky 

 volumes, the Descent of Man. Yet I sup- 

 pose it is probable that in our narrow anthro- 

 pinism we should have refused to listen to 

 him had he given us two volumes instead on 

 the Descent of Walnuts. Viewed as a ques- 

 tion merely of biological science, the one 

 subject is just as important as the other. 

 But the old Greek doctrine that ' man is the 

 measure of all things ' is strong in us still. 

 We form for ourselves a sort of pre-Coper- 

 nican universe, in which the world occupies 

 the central point of space, and man occupies 

 the central point of the world. What touches 



M 



