130 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



of modification of life-forms ; to keep on turning it 

 over and over again in the mind for twenty long 

 years ; to spend the working hours of every day in 

 collection and verification of facts for and against it ; 

 and then to have another man launching a ' bolt 

 from the blue' in the shape of a paper with exactly 

 the same theory, might well disturb even a philosopher 

 of Darwin's serenity. 



However, both Hooker and Lyell had read his 

 sketch a dozen years before, and it was arranged by 

 them, not as considering claims of priority, which 

 have too often been occasion of unworthy wrangling, 

 but in the ' interests of science generally,' that an 

 abstract of Darwin's manuscript should be read with 

 Wallace's paper at a meeting of the Linnean Society 

 on the ist July 1858. The full title of the joint 

 communication was On the Tendency of Species to form 

 Varieties^ and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and 

 Species by Natural Selection. Sir Joseph Hooker, de- 

 scribing the gathering, says that ' the interest excited 

 was intense, but the subject was too novel and too 

 ominous for the old school to enter the lists before 

 armouring. After the meeting it was talked over 

 with bated breath. Lyell's approval, and perhaps, 

 in a small way mine, as his lieutenant in the affair, 

 rather overawed the Fellows, who would otherwise 

 have flown out against the doctrine. We had, too, 

 the vantage ground of being familiar with the authors 

 and their theme.' Nothing can deprive Mr. Wallace 

 of the honour due to him as the co-originator of the 

 theory, which, regarded in its application to the 

 origin, history, and destiny of man, involves the 

 most momentous changes in belief, and there may 



