128 CHARLES DARWIN 



flung by its irritable antennae at the unconscious head 

 of the fertilising insect. In one case, the lip of the 

 flower secretes moisture and forms a sort of cold bath, 

 which wets the wings of the bees, so compelling them 

 to creep out of the bucket by a passage close to the 

 anthers and stigma ; in another case, the honey is con- 

 cealed at the bottom of so long a tube that only the 

 proper fertilising moth with a proboscis of ten or eleven 

 inches in length can probe the deep recess in which it 

 is hidden. These, and a hundred other similar in- 

 stances, were all carefully considered and described by 

 the great naturalist as the by-work with which he filled 

 up one of the intervals between his greater and more 

 comprehensive treatises. 



In the decade between 1860 and 1870 the progress 

 of Darwinism was rapid and continuous. One by one, 

 the few scientific men who still held out were overborne 

 by the weight of evidence. Geology kept supplying 

 fresh instances of transitional forms ; the progress of 

 research in unexplored countries kept adding to our 

 knowledge ot existing intermediate species and varieties. 

 During those ten years, Herbert Spencer published his 

 ' First Principles,' his ' Biology,' and the remodelled 

 form of his ' Psychology ; ' Huxley brought out ' Man's 

 Place in Nature,' the * Lectures on Comparative 

 Anatomy,' and the { Introduction to the Classification 

 of Animals ; ' Wallace produced his ' Malay Archi- 

 pelago ' and his ' Contributions to the Theory of Natural 

 Selection ; ' and Galton wrote his admirable work on 

 ' Hereditary Genius,' of which his own family is so re- 

 markable an instance. Tyndall and Lewes had long 

 since signified their warm adhesion. At Oxford, 



