Januaky 1, 1897.] 



KNOWLEDGE, 



on. These results, combined with those of other contem- 

 porary workers, were slowly but surely producing a great 

 transformation in the minds of thinking men. The 

 universal belief in a six-thousand-year period as the age of 

 the world had started on its retrograde course into dim 

 antiquity, to which all the light of subsequent discovery 

 can assign no limit, But to the great mass of the people, 

 at the time of which we write, all this was a vast igno- 

 rance. 



Popular opinion of that time (1837) was almost uniform 

 in favour of the belief that all living things left the hands 

 of the Creator just as we now 

 see them. That environment 

 — variations dependent upon 

 food, climate, habitat, and 

 other conditions — had any- 

 thing to do with the form, 

 size, or colour of an animal, 

 or that insects had any con- 

 nection with the scent, colour, 

 and form of flowers, was a 

 plane of thought too elevated 

 for the circumscribed under- 



delicate injections, and by the practice of vaccination be- 

 queathed to the whole civilized world a preventative for a 

 disease the ravages of which formed one of the most 

 terrible scourges to which ihe human race was ever 

 subject. Erasmus Darwin (the grandfather of the greater 

 Darwin) bad foreshadowed the theory of evolution in these 

 words : " When we revolve in our minds the great simi- 

 larity of structure which obtains in all the warm-blooded 

 animals, mankind included, one is led to conclude that 

 they have alike been produced from a similar living 

 filament." Von Baer had, in 1828, shown that the 



embryo of a fish, a lizard, a 

 bird, and an ox are not distin- 

 guishable from one another, 

 and continue growing so until 

 a certain stage, when their 

 characteristic forms become 

 apparent. Animals could, 

 therefore, be differentiated 

 according to the special 

 characters they assume from 

 the beginning. Geoffrey St. 

 Hilaire had demonstrated 



Faraday's Tube for Licniefving Cli'orine, etc. 



standing of the masses of that day. But the little leaven 

 which has in the interim transformed the whole lump had 

 begun to operate. John Hunter had pointed out the 

 necessity of embracing and connecting all the studies 

 relating to life, instead of limiting the science of biology 

 to the study of simple forms through anatomy and 

 physiology only. He raised surgery from a poor empirical 

 art to a noble science, and founded the Hunterian Museum, 

 where the organs of the animal body are displayed in all 

 their morphological aspects. His illustrious pupil, Jenner, 

 had displayed unrivalled skill in minute dissections and 



the unity of plan of the animal kingdom, and was one of 

 those who believed all species to be derived by modification 

 from primitive types. Sir Joseph Banks brought much 

 influence to bear on the progress of science by diffusing 

 the products cf other climates over each portion of the 

 globe. He brought into Europe the seeds of the South 

 Sea Islands, having previously distributed to the latter 

 those of Europe. I'ut although evolution was then in 

 what may be called the incipient stage, it remained to be 

 proved and worked out in detail by the classic researches 

 of Darwin. 



