2io darwin. 



The First Half-Century. 



Darwin, in his Historical Sketch of the Progress of 

 Opinion, and Haeckel, in his Schopfmgsgcschichte, 

 have outlined the views of these miscellaneous con- 

 tributors to the Evolution theory. The most sur- 

 prising thought raised by a review of the original 

 works, and of the passages quoted by the above 

 authors, is that so many came near the theory and 

 were neither captured by it nor drawn on to its 

 further serious exposition as the key to the history 

 of life. Only one writer between 1809 and 185S 

 came out in a really vigorous and sustained defence 

 of the evolutionary system of the Universe. This 

 was the unknown author of the Vestiges of Creation. 



We are now familiar with the main sources of 

 suggestion, and can consider some of these writers 

 more critically than Darwin or Haeckel have done, 

 from the standpoint of originality. It would be 

 interesting to know whether Wells, for example, 

 who so clearly set forth the Natural Selection 

 theory in 181 3, had seen any of the other ' antici- 

 pations ' which have been quoted. So with the two 

 other ' selectionists,' Matthew and Naudin. There 

 were a series of original writers who independently 

 approached Evolution upon the embryological side, 

 such as Meckel, Von Baer, and Serres. Others ad- 

 vocated or independently advanced the laws sug- 

 gested by Buffon, of modification due to the direct 

 action of environment under the influence of wide 



