Darwin- Wallace Celebration. 31 



to whom the Linnean Society has awarded the Darwin- 

 Wallace Medal, the recognition of the labours of my dear 

 friends who are gone, and of our pupils whom it is my 

 privilege and high honour to represent. I also feel that in 

 admitting me to this great honour the greatest which life 

 has brought to me you must have regarded me as in some 

 measure a surviving link with that champion of Darwinism, 

 the incomparable Huxley, to whose teaching and friendship 

 I owe so much. 



At the present moment there is less enthusiasm than 

 there was in the pursuit of morphology. Perhaps this 

 is due to the fact that much of the work which lay ready 

 to hand and easy to accomplish has been done. But in the 

 special branch of study w T hich Wallace himself set going 

 the inquiry into the local variations, races, and species 

 of insects as evidence of descent with modification, and 

 of the mechanisms by which that modification is brought 

 about there is still great work in progress, still an abundant 

 field to be reaped. In this country the discoveries of 

 Wallace, Bates, and R. Trimen are being extended by many 

 workers, chief among whom are Edward Poulton, Hope Pro- 

 fessor in the University of Oxford, and the group of students 

 which he has gathered around him. It is natural that the 

 gradual and steady growth of the results of such inquiries 

 should attract less general attention than some of the efforts 

 to establish a new line of attack upon the problems of Varia- 

 tion and Heredity. Naturally enough, many have been 

 ambitious to make such new departures, and have met with 

 varying successes. 



Several able observers and experimenters have set them- 

 selves the task of improving, if possible, the theoretical 

 structure raised by Darwin and Wallace. One of the earliest 

 of these was Dr. George Romanes, whose views on physiolo- 

 gical selection and on instinct were communicated by him to 

 this Society, but have not successfully held the field. Later 

 we have had the doctrine of mutation advocated on a some- 

 what unsatisfactory basis of fact by Professor de Vries, and 

 the resuscitation and development of the observations and 



