THE EVOLUTION IDEA 139 



between stars and ignited meteors; in flying fishes, 

 between fishes and birds; and in bats, between birds 

 and quadrupeds. 



Bacon also observed "that plants sometimes 

 degenerate to the point of changing into other 

 plants," but so far as I know gave no grounds of 

 support for this opinion. These quotations show 

 that even at the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury the mutability of species was a live ques- 

 tion which was being more or less discussed, and 

 that mutability was seen in its modern bearings 

 upon Evolution. 



Bacon went further, and in his Nova Atlantis 

 we find that he projects the establishment of a 

 scientific institution to be devoted to the prog- 

 ress of the natural sciences, for experiments upon 

 the metamorphoses of organs and observations 

 upon what causes species to vary, and for re- 

 searches which would reveal the manner in which 

 species had multiplied and become diversified in 

 a state of Nature. After three centuries this 

 project is materializing so that one of our new 

 experimental stations might well be called the 

 Baconian Institute of Experimental Evolution. 



The central idea of the grand evolution of life 

 is frequently implied rather than clearly ex- 

 pressed in Bacon's writings. He differed from 

 Descartes and later philosophers in proposing 



