iv MODERN EVOLUTION 151 



with Haeckel at their head, were enthusiastic. 

 They rechristened Evolution Darwinismus. Darwin, 

 like all prophets, had more honour in other countries 

 than in his own. Translation after translation of 

 the Origin followed apace, and the personal interest 

 that gathered round the central idea led to the 

 perusal of the book by people who had never before 

 opened a scientific treatise. Punch seized on it 

 as subject of caricature ; and writers of light verse 

 found welcome material for ' chaff ' which the winds 

 of oblivion have blown away, a stanza here and there 

 surviving, as in Mr. Courthope's Aristophanic lines : 



Eggs were laid as before, but each time more and more 

 varieties struggled and bred, 



Till one end of the scale dropped its ancestor's tail, and the 

 other got rid of his head. 



From the bill, in brief words, were developed the Birds, un- 

 less our tame pigeons and ducks lie ; 



From the tail and hind legs, in the second-laid eggs, the apes, 

 and Professor Huxley 1 



Heeding neither squib, satire, nor sermon, Dar- 

 win, in the quiet of his Kentish home, went on 

 rearranging old materials, collecting new materials, 

 and verifying both, the outcome of this being his 

 works on the Fertilisation of Orchids and the Varia- 

 tion of Plants and Animals under Domestication^ 

 published in 1862 and 1867 respectively. Between 

 these dates Huxley's Man's Place in Nature logical 

 supplement to the Origin of Species appeared. But 

 of this more anon. 



Meanwhile, as already named, Mr. Patrick Matthew 

 had in the Gardener's Chronicle of 7th April 1860 

 drawn attention to an appendix to his book on Naval 



