DEVELOPMENT AND CREATION. 7 



greeted his Munich discourse. This " enfant terrible " 

 of the school this well-nicknamed " Acting privy 

 counsellor of the board of confusion " l whose merits 

 in involuntarily advancing the cause of metamorphism 

 I have already done justice to in the preface to the 

 third edition of my " Natural History of Creation" 2 

 expresses himself in the " Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologic," 

 which is edited by him and Virchow (tenth yearly 

 part, X. 1878, p. '66) as follows: "At the Munich 

 meeting of naturalists, Virchow by a few weighty 

 words cleared the atmosphere, which was heavy and 

 stifling under the pressure of the incubus called 

 Descent, and once more freed science from that night- 

 mare which it has so long in many opinions so much 

 too long allowed to weigh upon it ; freed it, let us 

 hope, once and for ever. The forecasts of this storm 

 were discernible many years since, and its whole 

 course has been a strictly normal one. When the 

 germs planted by Darwin, and that promised so much, 

 were forced into growth by a feverish, hot-house heat, 

 and began to sprout into sterile weeds, their small 

 vitality was plain to our eyes. So long as the waves 

 run too high under the pressure of a psychical 

 storm, it is almost useless to protest against it, for 



1 " Wirkliche Geheime Ober-Confusionsrath." 



2 Translated under the supervision of E. Kay Lankester. London ; 

 C. Regan Paul & Co. 



