124 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



on classification. He anticipated ideas now beginning 

 to be held, viz., that Cycads were more closely related 

 to Cryptogams than to Conifers, and refused to regard 

 Stigmaria as a Dicotyledon, as had been held by English 

 botanists. The true relationships of these and other 

 arboreal remains from the Carboniferous rocks were not, 

 however, clearly made out until the later years of the 

 century, when Williamson began his epoch-making work 

 on the Fossil Plants of the Coal Measures, 



Charles Darwin 



The year 1859 was destined to be a fateful one not 

 merely for science in general and botany in particular 

 but for every department of learning, for in that year was 

 pubHshed a book that has had a deeper and more wide- 

 reaching influence on the trend of human thought and 

 endeavour than any other that has ever come from the 

 printing-press — I mean, of course. The Origin of Species 

 by Charles Darwin. Needless to say I do not intend to 

 ask your attention just now to more than those parts of 

 Darwin's life-work that are primarily botanical, although 

 it will be necessary for you to comprehend, in some 

 measure at least, the bearing of his larger views on the 

 science in which we are at present more particularly 

 interested. Papers, pamphlets, books, almost libraries, 

 one might say, have been and are still being written by 

 authors, scientific and unscientific, deahng with Darwin's 

 life and labours ; to these I must refer you should you 

 desire to know more than I have time to tell you, and to 

 one work more especially. The Life and Letters, by his 

 distinguished son. Sir Francis Darwin, whose name is so 

 famihar to you as the author of numerous important 

 monographs on various sections of plant physiology. 

 The brief account I am about to give you is taken chiefly 

 from these volumes and from the essays of Darwin's 

 friend and champion, Huxley. 



