134 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



other hand. Whether, under the different conditions of pres- 

 sure, heat, magnetism, electricity, which existed at an earlier 

 stage of the earth's existence, chemical combinations spon- 

 taneously occurred which produced this living compound in the 

 first instance, is so far one of the unsolved problems which has 

 exercised the minds of many. We can produce no protoplasm 

 in our laboratories with any of the powers at our disposal, that is 

 certain. What we just stated as a hypothesis is considered by 

 some one of the possible processes of creation for the spark of 

 life, the seed, once produced, evolved millions of ever-growing 

 varieties. Spontaneous generation may have obtained once. 



1809 1882. Darwin (Charles) established the LAW OF 

 BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION, one of the grandest generalisations 

 on record, after devoting forty years to the close obser- 

 vation and study of plants, insects, worms, birds, animals, 

 and man, finally demonstrating more than the principle 

 laid down by Lamarck, for he proved the variability of 

 Species BY NATURAL SELECTION AND THEREFORE THE 

 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST (1859). Two strongly-winged 

 pigeons pairing together instead of pairing at haphazard 

 with weaker pigeons (this is sexual selection), their descen- 

 dants, able to fly more swiftly than most pigeons to escape 

 danger, and to a greater distance to find food, will survive 

 weak pigeon varieties, because, being the fittest, they come 

 off victorious in the struggle for life. Such, in the main, 

 is the theory in a nutshell. The theory of evolution, as 

 the reader is aware, had been repeatedly broached, but 

 the proof that evolution obtained in biology, the way how 

 biological evolution worked itself out, this was the great 

 work of Darwin, and the one which settled the matter 

 for all times. Darwin has supplied us with a prodigious 

 mass of facts a vast number of evidences showing that 

 the plants and animals now existing are all descended from 

 common ancestors, whose structure and organisation were 

 less complicated than they are at present. To prove this 

 proposition, which at first offended our prejudices and 

 pride, he has shown us innumerable instances of the gra- 

 dation of species into one another, so that from the present 

 forms of plants and animals, it has become possible to 



