Tiii ' HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



already said, would be dark. But the same disposition to 

 form varieties still existing, a darker and a darker race 

 would in the course of time occur; and as the darkest 

 would be the best fitted for the climate, this would at 

 length become the most prevalent, if not the only race, in 

 the particular country in which it had originated." He 

 then extends these samxC views to the white inhabitants of 

 colder climates. I am indebted to Mr. Rowley, of the 

 United States, for having called my attention, through Mr. 

 Brace, to the above passage of Dr. Wells' work. 



The Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, afterward Dean of 

 Manchester, in the fourth volume of the '^ Horticultural 

 Transactions," 1822, and in his work on the *' Amarylli- 

 dacese*' (1837, pp. 19, 339), declares that ^'horticultural 

 experiments have established, beyond the possibility of 

 refutation, that botanical species are only a higher and 

 more permanent class of varieties." He extends the same 

 view to animals. The dean believes that single species of 

 each genus were created in an originally highly plastic con- 

 dition, and that these have produced, chiefly by inter- 

 crossing, but likewise by variation, all our existing species. 



In 1826 Professor Grant, in the concluding paragraph 

 in his well-known paper (*'* Edinburgh Philosophical 

 Journal," vol. xiv, p. 283) on the Spongilla, clearly de- 

 clares his belief that species are descended from other 

 species, and that they become improved in the course of 

 modification. This same view was given in his Fifty-fifth 

 Lecture, published in the *' Lancet" in 1834. 



In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on 

 "Naval Timber and Arboriculture," in which he gives 

 precisely the same view on the origin of species as that 

 (presently to be alluded to) propounded by Mr. Wallace 

 and myself in the "Linnean Journal," and as that enlarged 

 in the present volume. Unfortunately the view was given 

 by Mr. Matthew very briefly in scattered passages in an 

 appendix to a work on a different subject, so that it re- 

 mained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew atten- 

 tion to it in the '* Gardeners' Chronicle," on April 7, 

 1860. The differences of Mr. Matthew's views from mine 

 are not of much importance: he seems to consider that the 

 world was nearly depopulated at successive periods, and 

 then restocked; and he gives as an alternative, that uew 



