12 HISTORICAL SKETCH 



to Mr. Rowley, of the United States, for having called my 

 attention, through Mr. Brace, to the above passage in Dr. 

 Wells' work. 



The Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, afterwards Dean of Man- 

 chester, in the fourth volume of the ' Horticultural Trans- 

 actions,' 1822, and in his work of the 'Amaryllidacese' 

 (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 condition, and that these have 

 produced, chiefly by intercrossing, 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 declares 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 55th 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 brief- 

 ly in scattered passages in an Appendix to a work on a differ- 

 ent subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew 

 himself drew attention to it in the 'Gardener's Chronicle,' on 

 April 7th, i860. The differences of Mr. Matthew's view from 

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

 the world was nearly depopulated at successive periods, and 

 then re-stocked; and he gives as an alternative, that new 

 forms may be generated " without the presence of any mould 

 or germ of former aggregates." I am not sure that I under- 

 stand some passages; but it seems that he attributes much 

 influence to the direct action of the conditions of life. He 

 clearly saw, however, the full force of the principle of natural 

 selection. 



