MODERN SCIENCE. 145 



was at first associated, went to Brazil in order to study 

 tropical life in its richest region. It was these two genuine 

 inquirers who opened an almost virgin soil and made it 

 known to the scientific world. In the depths of Brazilian 

 forests where he wandered for years, Bates, after collecting 

 endless varieties of tropical butterflies, unravelled the history 

 of evolution on the gauze-like wings of these insects. He 

 also expounded the fine and striking theory of mimicry a 

 crucial instance of animal development. The phenomena he 

 thus disclosed were precious to biological science : for the 

 strange disguises which insects and birds frequently assume 

 are facts that afforded a new principle to Charles Darwin, 

 "which enabled him with ease to reduce a great number of 

 points to order and symmetry," and supplied him with addi- 

 tional evidences of natural selection. " The Naturalist on the 

 Amazons " was the work which made Bates famous. 



b. 1825. Huxley, equally great as a writer, a philosopher, 

 and a man of science, is probably the greatest biologist 

 living. He originated researches in oceanic HYDROZOA 

 during a voyage around the world ; showed the existence 

 of extensive masses of monera at the bottom of deep oceans, 

 "where they form a sort of live slime" (1868); carefully 

 investigated the development of invertebrates ; pursued 

 investigations in PROTOPLASM and advanced this branch 

 rapidly, thereby becoming the highest authority on the 

 origins of life so far as they can be determined by man. 

 In numerous branches of biology, Huxley has contributed 

 facts and conclusions which corroborate with unanswerable 

 force the evolutionary process elucidated by Darwin, so 

 that he is justly regarded as one of the most powerful 

 demonstrators of the law. With keen scientific perception, 

 for instance, he demonstrated birds to be descended from 

 reptiles from the Dinosaurs the immense gap between 

 them being filled up by the discovery of intermediate bird- 

 like reptiles and reptilian birds the linking ancestors of 

 the bird being the Compsognathus and Archaeopteryx of the 

 Old World and the Ichthyornis and Hesperornis of the 

 New World the last two brought out by Prof. Marsh. 

 This genealogy of the bird supplies one of the most 



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