42 Darwin- Wallace Celebration. 



To THE LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



1st July, 1908. 



THE Senatus Academicus of the UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 

 joins heartily with the Linnean Society of London in 

 celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the communication to 

 the Society, and thus to the world, of the conception arrived 

 at independently by the two master minds of Darwin and 

 Wallace of the influence of " Natural Selection " on the 

 " Perpetuation of Varieties and Species." 



The concept was no ordinary contribution to the inter- 

 pretation of the orderly advance of the organic universe. 

 Under the dominating genius and untiring experimental 

 research of Darwin the truth of Natural Selection as one 

 of the powerful factors in evolution was established and 

 remains to us ; but this fact is not the measure of the 

 value of the first idea and after demonstration. There was 

 here the germ of a revolution in human thought, and the 

 debt we owe to Darwin and Wallace is that their thought 

 and work, more particularly the thought and work o 

 Darwin, have brought about within the period the close 

 of which is fitly marked to-day, our emancipation from the 

 trammels of scholasticism and the recognition of evolution 

 previously unheeded as the normal process in the world 

 organic and inorganic. The cordiality with which the 

 Senatus Academicus supports the Linnean Society on this 

 occasion is enhanced by the circumstance that Charles 

 Darwin was an alumnus of the University of Edinburgh. 



(Signed) W. TURNER, Principal. 

 (Signed) L. J. GRANT, Sec. Sen. Acad. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, TRINITY COLLEGE (Prof. H. 



H. Dixon, D.Sc., F.R.S.). 



The General Secretary explained that Prof. H. H. Dixon, 

 who was to have represented the University of Dublin, had 



