30 J)arwin- Wallace Celebration. 



government, and of the prosperity of the modern state. 

 How far we are from any satisfactory progress in this 

 direction, the words and the actions of political leaders of all 

 parties at this moment fully demonstrate. 



The effect of the Darwin- Wallace doctrine in stimulating 

 the investigation of the structure of recent and fossil plants 

 and animals, and of the embryology or growth from the 

 egg of all living things, in order to arrive at a knowledge 

 of their ancestry and genealogical relationships, was quite 

 remarkable. That class of study overshadowed the more 

 difficult experimental work as to variation and heredity 

 which was carried on by Mr. Darwin himself and some of 

 his followers. 



The attempt to construct a genealogy of the animal king- 

 dom was boldly entered on by Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, whom 

 you have this day honoured by association with Wallace, 

 Hooker, and Galton in the award of the medal commemora- 

 tive of this great occasion. The philosophic character of 

 Haeckel's writings, and the complete adoption by him of the 

 doctrine of descent as the guiding principle of zoological 

 investigation, gave a special value and influence to his work, 

 which is fitly recognised to-day. He \vas the first to apply 

 the newly accepted doctrine to all branches of morphology 

 and to systematic zoology and botany and did so with the 

 convincing power of a wonderful range of knowledge and 

 unbounded enthusiasm. The new doctrine led me into the 

 study of the growth from the egg of various forms of animal 

 life in the search for evidence of genetic affinities and diver- 

 gences, and to the re-examination of the structure of various 

 animals by aid of the new light of the theory of descent, and 

 the improved methods of microscopical research of those 

 <lays. The two foremost of my friends and companions in 

 this work Frank M. Balfour and Henry N. Moseley were 

 taken from us prematurely, but not before they had made 

 splendid contributions to the understanding and alignment 

 of animal forms on the new basis prepared by Darwin and 

 Wallace. I gratefully acknowledge, in the association of my 

 name to-day with that of the great veterans of our science, 



