THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS 117 



ists, with the plasticity of youth, assimilated almost 

 to a man, with the utmost avidity, the great truths 

 thus showered down upon them by the preacher of 

 evolution. 



Sir Joseph Hooker and Professor Huxley were among 

 the first to give in their adhesion and stand up boldly 

 for the new truth by the side of the reckless and dis- 

 turbing innovator. In June 1859, nearly a year after 

 the reading of the Darwin- Wallace papers at the Linnean 

 Society, but five months previously to the publication 

 of the ' Origin of Species,' Huxley lectured at the Royal 

 Institution on * Persistent Types of Animal Life,' and 

 declared against the old barren theory of " successive 

 creations, in favour of the new and fruitful hypothesis 

 of gradual modification. In December 1859, a month 

 later than the appearance of Darwin's book, Hooker 

 published his ' Introduction to the Flora of Australia,' 

 in the first part of which he championed the belief in 

 the descent and modification of species, and enforced 

 his views by many original observations drawn from the 

 domain of botanical science. For fifteen years, as Darwin 

 himself gratefully observed in his introduction to the 

 ' Origin of Species,' that learned botanist had shared 

 the secret of natural selection, and aided its author in 

 every possible way by his large stores of knowledge 

 and his excellent judgment. Bates, the naturalist on 

 the Amazons, followed fast with his beautiful and striking 

 theory of mimicry, a crucial instance well explained. 

 The facts of the strange disguises which birds and 

 insects often assume had long been present to his acute 

 mind, and he hailed with delight the discovery of the 

 new principle, which at once enabled him to reduce 



