1 8 CHARLES DARWIN 



hypothesis. Among the depths of Brazilian forests Bates 

 was reading the story of evolution on the gauze-like 

 wings of tropical butterflies. Under the scanty shade of 

 Malayan palm-trees Wallace was independently spelling 

 out in rude outline the very theory of survival of the 

 fittest, which Charles Darwin himself was simultaneously 

 perfecting and polishing among the memoirs and pam- 

 phlets of his English study. Wollaston in Madeira was 

 pointing out the strange adaptations of the curious local 

 snails and beetles. Von Buch in the Canaries was 

 coming to the conclusion that varieties may be slowly 

 changed into permanent species. Lecoq and Von Baer 

 were gradually arriving, one by the botanical route, the 

 other by the embryological, at the same opinion. Before 

 Charles Darwin was twenty, Dean Herbert had declared 

 from the profound depth of his horticultural knowledge 

 that kinds were only mere fixed sports ; and Patrick 

 Matthew, in the appendix to a work on ' Naval Timber,' 

 had casually developed, without perceiving its import- 

 ance, the actual distinctive Darwinian doctrine of natural 

 selection. Eobert Chambers published in 1844 his 

 * Vestiges of Creation,' in which Lamarck's theory was 

 impressed and popularised under a somewhat spoilt and 

 mistaken form : it was not till 1859 that the first 

 edition of the ' Origin of Species ' burst like a thunder- 

 bolt upon the astonished world of unprepared and 

 unscientific thinkers. 



This general attitude of interest and inquiry is of 

 deep importance to the proper comprehension of Charles 

 Darwin's life and work, and that for two distinct reasons. 

 In the first place, the universal stir and deep prying 

 into evolutionary questions which everywhere existed 



