IGNORABIMUS E T RESTRINGAMUR. \ 1 5 



digested a considerable number of the most important 

 facts, and has critically co-ordinated them to a harmo- 

 nious whole. It is precisely under this aspect that 

 transmutation is of such inestimable value to mor- 

 phology ; it enables us to rise from the bare empirical 

 knowledge of numberless isolated facts to a philoso- 

 phical conception of their efficient causes. 



The aversion and contempt which the theories of 

 descent and selection have met with at Berlin, more 

 than in any other place, is in great measure to be 

 explained by the circumstance that, during the last 

 two decades, morphological studies have been more 

 neglected in that university than any others. In 

 no other city of Germany has evolution in general, 

 as well as Darwinism in particular, been so little 

 valued, so utterly misunderstood, and treated with 

 such sovereign disdain as in Berlin. Nay, Adolf 

 Bastian, the most zealous of all the Berlin opponents 

 of our doctrines, has insisted on these facts with pecu- 

 liar satisfaction. Of all the conspicuous naturalists of 

 Berlin only one accepted the doctrine of transmutation 

 from the beginning with sincere warmth and full convic- 

 tion, being, indeed, persuaded of its truth even before 

 Darwin himself. This was the gifted botanist Alex- 

 ander Braun, who is lately dead a morphologist who 

 was equally distinguished by the extent of his com- 

 prehensive knowledge of details, as by his philosophical 



