1877 SPEECH AT THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLUB 229 



which have befallen me, to be called upon to represent 

 my distinguished friend Mr. Darwin upon this occasion. 

 I say to represent Mr. Darwin, for I cannot hope to 

 personate him, or to say all that would be dictated by 

 a mind conspicuous for its powerful humility and strong 

 gentleness. 



Mr. Darwin's work had fully earned the distinction 

 you have to-day conferred upon him four -and -twenty 

 years ago ; but I doubt not that he would have found 

 in that circumstance an exemplification of the wise fore- 

 sight of his revered intellectual mother. Instead of 

 offering her honours when they ran a chance of being 

 crushed beneath the accumulated marks of approbation 

 of the whole civilised world, the University has waited 

 until the trophy was finished, and has crowned the edifice 

 with the delicate wreath of academic appreciation. 



This is what I suppose Mr. Darwin might have said 

 had he been happily able to occupy my place. Let me 

 now speak in my own person and in obedience to your 

 suggestion, let me state as briefly as possible what appear 

 to me to be Mr. Darwin's distinctive merits. 



From the time of Aristotle to the present day I know 

 of but one man who has shown himself Mr. Darwin's 

 equal in one field of research and that is Ke'aumur. In 

 the breadth of range of Mr. Darwin's investigations upon 

 the ways and works of animals and plants, in the minute 

 patient accuracy of his observations, and in the philo- 

 sophical ideas which have guided them, I know of no 

 one who is to be placed in the same rank with him 

 except Reaumur. 



Secondly, looking back through the same long period 

 of scientific history, I know of but one man, Lyonnet, 

 who not being from his youth a trained anatomist, has 

 published such an admirable minute anatomical research 

 as is contained in Mr. Darwin's work on the Cirripedes. 



Thirdly, in that region which lies between Geology 

 and Biology, and is occupied by the problem of the 



