HISTORICAL SKETCH 15 



The Hon. and Eev. W. Herbert, afterward Dean of 

 Manchester, in the fourth volume of the "Horticultural 

 Transactions," 1822, and in his work on the "Amarylli- 

 daceee" (1837, pages 19, 339), declares that "horticultural 

 experiments have established, beyond the possibility of 

 refutation, that botanical species are only a higher and 

 more permanent class of varieties." He extends the same 

 view to animals. The Dean believes that single species 

 of each genus were created in an originally highly plastic 

 condition, and that these have produced, chiefly by in- 

 tercrossing, but likewise by variation, all our existing 

 species. 



In 1826 Professor Grant, in the concluding paragraph 

 in his well-known paper ("Edinburgh Philosophical Jour- 

 nal," vol. xiv. page 283) on the Spongilla, clearly de- 

 clares his belief that species are descended from other 

 species, and that they become improved in the course of 

 modification. This same view was given in his 55th 

 Lecture, pu.blished in the "Lancet" in 1834. 



In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on 

 ''Naval Timber and Arboriculture," in which he gives 

 precisely the same view on the origin of species as that 

 (presently to be alluded to) propounded by Mr. Wallace 

 and myself in the "Linnean Journal," and as that en- 

 larged in the present volume. Unfortunately the view 

 was given by Mr. Matthew very briefly in scattered pas- 

 sages in an Appendix to a work on a different Subject, so 

 that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself 

 drew attention to it in the "Gardener's Chronicle," on 

 April 7, 1860. The differences of Mr. Matthew's view 

 from mine are not of much importance: he seems to con- 

 sider that the world was nearly depopulated at successive 



