404 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



vented the recognition of Mr. Darwin by his own univer- 

 sity have vanished, and this year Cambridge, amid uni- 

 versal acclamation, conferred on him her Doctor's de- 

 gree. The Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had so 

 long persistently closed its doors against Mr. Darwin, 

 has also yielded at last; while sermons, lectures, and 

 published articles plainly show that even the clergy 

 have, to a great extent, become acclimatised to the Dar- 

 winian air. My brief reference to Mr. Darwin in the 

 Birmingham Address was based upon the knowledge 

 that such changes had been accomplished, and were 

 still going on. 



That the lecture of Professor Virchow can, to any 

 practical extent, disturb this progress of public faith 

 in the theory of evolution, I do not believe. That the 

 special lessons of caution which he inculcates were ex- 

 emplified by me, years before his voice was heard upon 

 this subject, has been proved in the foregoing pages. 

 In point of fact, if he had preceded me instead of fol- 

 lowing me, and if my desire had been to incorporate 

 his wishes in my words, I could not have accomplished 

 this more completely. It is possible, moreover, to draw 

 the coincident lines still further, for most of what he 

 has said about spontaneous generation might have been 

 uttered by me. I share his opinion that the theory 

 of evolution in its complete form involves the passage 

 from matter which we now hold to be inorganic into 

 organised matter; in other words, involves the assump- 

 tion that at some period or other of the earth's history 

 there occurred what would be now called ' spontaneous 

 generation/ I agree with him that ' the proofs of it 

 .are still wanting.' ' Whoever,' he says, ' recalls to mind 

 the lamentable failure of all the attempts made very 

 recently to discover a decided support for the generatio 

 cequivoca in the lower forms of transition from the in- 



