1864-1S69] COPLEY MEDAL 255 



barely struck upon before. The same remark applies to his Letter 180 

 researches on the structure and various adaptations of the 

 orchideous flower to a definite object connected with impreg- 

 nation of the plants through the agency of insects with 

 foreign pollen. There has not yet been time for their due 

 influence being felt in the advancement of the science. But 

 in either subject they constitute an advance per saltum. I 

 need not dwell upon the value of his geological researches, 

 which won for him one of the earlier awards of the Wollaston 

 Medal from the Geological Society, the best of judges on the 

 point. 



And lastly, Mr. Darwin's great essay on the Origin of 

 Species by Natural Selection. This solemn and mysterious 

 subject had been either so lightly or so grotesquely treated 

 before, that it was hardly regarded as being within the bounds 

 of legitimate philosophical investigation. Mr. Darwin, after 

 twenty years of the closest study and research, published his 

 views, and it is sufficient to say that they instantly fixed the 

 attention of mankind throughout the civilised world. That 

 the efforts of a single mind should have arrived at success on 

 a subject of such vast scope, and encompassed with such 

 difficulties, was more than could have been reasonably 

 expected, and I am far from thinking that Charles Darwin 

 has made out all his case. But he has treated it with such 

 power and in such a philosophical and truth-seeking spirit, 

 and illustrated it with such an amount of original and 

 collated observation as fairly to have brought the subject 

 within the bounds of rational scientific research. I consider 

 this great essay on genetic Biology to constitute a strong 

 additional claim on behalf of Mr. Darwin for the Copley 

 Medal. 1 



1 The following letter (Dec. 3rd, 1864"), from Mr. Huxley to Sir 

 J. D. Hooker, is reprinted, by the kind permission of Mr. L. Huxley, 

 from his father's Life, I., p. 255. Sabine's address (from the Reader) 

 is given in the Life and Letters, III., p. 28. In the Proceedings of 

 the Royal Society the offending sentence is slightly modified. It is said, 

 in Huxley's Life (loc. cit., note), that the sentence which follows it was 

 introduced to mitigate the effect : — 



"I wish you had been at the anniversary meeting and dinner, 

 because the latter was very pleasant, and the former, to me, very 

 disagreeable. My distrust of Sabine is, as you know, chronic ; and 

 I went determined to keep careful watch on his address, lest some 



