478 ON SPECIES 



Witness the self-confident style of Whewell 1 and Baden 

 Powell, 2 Sedgwick 3 and Buckland. Berkeley has avoided 

 this latter snare but has got thoroughly imbued with the 

 idea that it matters little how his matter is served up. The 

 book, however, pleases me amazingly ; there is a lofty tone 

 throughout it, an aiming at the highest principles and an 

 earnest desire to make his readers think for themselves as 

 much as he does for them. 



Bentham's resume of our views will appear in the Journal 

 Linnean. The Germans have got to dreaming on the subject 

 as usual, and A. Braun is groping amongst the blacks for 

 the characters of the whites. There is a story somewhere 

 of an Englishman, Frenchman, and German being each 

 called on to describe a camel. The Englishman immediately 

 embarked for Egypt, the Frenchman went to the Jardin 

 des Plantes, and the German shut himself up in his study 

 and thought it out ! How can Braun, who has no practical 

 knowledge of large masses of species, know where the generic 

 idea and name is to be fixed, how far, in short, systematic 

 language is to be carried into the subdivisions of plants ? 

 Seemann has got some twaddle about whether genera are 

 objective or subjective, a point easily disposed of, Rosa 



1 William Whewell (1794-1866) was the famous Master of Trinity, Cam 

 bridge, from 1841, of whom Sydney Smith said that science was his forte and 

 Omniscience his foible. He had held the chairs of Mineralogy and Moral 

 Philosophy, and his memoirs of the Tides had won a gold medal from the Royal 

 Society in 1837. His universality of learning was shown in his History of the 

 Inductive Sciences (1837), and his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), 

 which, his friends recognised, produced a greater effect on study than any 

 specialisation of his. His other celebrated work, Of the Plurality of Worlds, 

 appeared ID 1853. 



2 Baden Powell (1796-1860) was Savilif>n Professor of Geometry at Oxford 

 from 1827. He wrote especially on radiant heat, optics, and the general history 

 and study of science. A liberal churchman, he took his part in theological 

 controversy, and was a contributor to Essays and Reviews. Among his best 

 known books were those on the Unity of Worlds, Natural Theology, and the 

 Order of Nature. 



3 Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) was one of those men whose influence was 

 due as much to his warm affections as to his powers of preaching, teaching, 

 and research. As Woodwardian Professor of Geology from 1818, he reorganised 

 geological teaching at Cambridge ; was President of the Geological Society 

 1831, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1851 and the Copley in 1863, and 

 refusing other preferment, became Canon of Norwich. His research into 

 British geology resulted in the establishment of the Cambrian system ; but 

 though a pioneer in his own department, he was unreceptive of new and pro- 

 gressive ideas, such as Lyell's uniformitarianism, and vehemently opposed 

 Darwin. 



