THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, 



By CHARLES DARWIN. 



A new American edition of "The Origin of Species," later than the latest 

 English edition, has just been published, with the author's most recent cor- 

 rections and additions. 



In the whole history of the progress of knowledge there is no case so re- 

 markable of a system of doctrines, at first generally condemned as false and 

 absurd, coming into general acceptance in the scientific world in a single 

 decade. From the following statements, the reader will infer the estimate 

 that is now placed upon the man and his works by the highest authorities. 



" Personally and practically exercised in zoology, in minute anatomy, in 

 geology ; a student of geographical distribution, not on maps and in museums 

 only, but by long voyages and laborious collection ; having largely advanced 

 each of these branches of science, and having spent many years in gathering 

 and sifting materials for his present work, the store of accurately-registereil 

 facts upon which the author of the 'Origin of Species' is able to draw at 

 will is prodigious."^Prof. T. H. Huxley. 



" Far abler men than myself may confess tliat they have not that imtiring 

 patience in accumulating, and that wonderful skill in using, large masses of 

 facts of the most varied kind — that wide and accurate physiological knowl- 

 edge — that acuteness in devising, that skill in carrying out experiments, and 

 that admirable style of cc;i;position, at once clear, persuasive, and judicial, 

 qualities which, in their harmonious combination, mark out Mr. Darwin as 

 the man, perhaps of all men now living, best fitted for the great work he 

 has undertaken and accomplished." — Alfeed Russell Wallace. 



In Germany these views are rapidly extending. Prof. Giekie, a distin- 

 guished British geologist, attended the recent Congress of German Natural- 

 ists and Physicians, at Innspruck, in which some eight hundred savants 

 were present, and thus writes : 



"What specially struck me was the universal sway which the writings 

 of Darwin now exercise over the German mind. You see it on every side, in 

 private conversation, in printed papers, in all the many sections into which 

 such a meeting as that at Innspruck divides. Darwin's name is often men- 

 tioned, and always with the profoundcst veneration. But even where no al- 

 lusion is specially made to him, nay, even more markedly, where such allusion 

 is absent, we see how thoroughly his doctrines have permeated the scientific 

 min'd, even in those departments of knowledge which might seem at first 

 sight to be farthest from natural history. ' You are still discussing in Eng- 

 land,' said a German friend to me, ' whether or not the tlieory of Darwin can 

 be true. "We have got a long way beyond that here. His theory is now our 

 common starting-point.' And, so far as my experience went, I found it to 

 be so." 



U. ^T'FLElTOISr &; CO.. r>Taljlisliers. 



