A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



can hardly be said to have done more than that. In- 

 deed, some critics have denied it even this merit. 

 After its publication, as before, the conception of trans- 

 mutation of species remained in the popular estimation, 

 both lay and scientific, an almost forgotten " heresy." 

 It is true that here and there a scientist of greater or 

 less repute as Von Buch, Meckel, and Von Baer in 

 Germany, Bory Saint-Vincent in France, Wells, Grant, 

 and Matthew in England, and Leidy in America had 

 expressed more or less tentative dissent from the doc- 

 trine of special creation and immutability of species, 

 but their unaggressive suggestions, usually put for- 

 ward in obscure publications, and incidentally, were 

 utterly overlooked and ignored. And so, despite the 

 scientific advances along many lines at the middle of 

 the century, the idea of the transmutability of organic 

 races had no such prominence, either in scientific or un- 

 scientific circles, as it had acquired fifty years before. 

 Special creation held the day, seemingly unopposed. 



DARWIN AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



But even at this time the fancied security of the spe- 

 cial-creation hypothesis was by no means real. Though 

 it seemed so invincible, its real position was that of an 

 apparently impregnable fortress beneath which, all un- 

 beknown to the garrison, a powder-mine has been dug 

 and lies ready for explosion. For already there existed 

 in the secluded work-room of an English naturalist, a 

 manuscript volume and a portfolio of notes which might 

 have sufficed, if given publicity, to shatter the entire 

 structure of the special-creation hypothesis. The nat- 

 uralist who, by dint of long and patient effort, had con- 



166 



