30 MEMORIAL TRIBUTE 



above quotations, and his form of religious belief, there 

 are passages in his Manual of Botany, published three 

 years after his first volume of British Birds, which 

 appear to show that his views had been undergoing 

 a change, as in that work he says : " There is nothing 

 absolutely certain as to species," that " species often 

 pass into each other by gradations which render it 

 impossible to draw a line of demarcation, and thus 

 all species are more or less arbitrary ; " while in his 

 geological teaching he had quite abandoned those 

 views as to creation which so hampered Hugh Miller 

 to the last, and led to his fanciful theory of interpreta- 

 tion of the first chapter of Genesis. In the epitome 

 of his lectures as dictated to his class in Marischal 

 College, he says : " Species have not changed during 

 historical times," apparently implying that they may 

 have changed during longer prehistoric periods ; and, 

 again, in that epitome he says " the most perfected 

 animals appear to have been created last," thus assuming 

 that there had been successive creations not one only, 

 once for all. He was absolutely free from prejudice, 

 always kept his eyes open, and constantly insisted on 

 ascertained fact as the only legitimate basis of theory : 

 while his love of truth and strict adherence to it formed, 

 it may be said, the backbone of his life and of his work. 

 He was eminently worthy of the Gaelic name he bore, 

 " Gillivray " servant of the truth ; and the publication 

 of The Origin of Species would probably have been 

 hailed by him as the rising of a new sun in the heaven 

 of science, and as bringing the light for which he had 



