NEWTON AND DARWIN. 9 



of the same Species/* Only the year before his 

 death appeared his work upon earthworms, in which 

 he traced the operations of worms in gradually cover- 

 ing the surface of the globe with a layer of mould. 



NEWTON AND DARWIN. 



BY R. A. PROCTOR. 



IN Charles Darwin science has lost one who has done 

 more than any since Newton to extend men's recog- 

 nition of the wideness of the domain of law. When 

 Copernicus and Kepler and Newton removed the- 

 earth from the central position in the universe, which 

 had so long been assigned to it, they taught men to- 

 appreciate more justly than before the vast extension 

 of the universe in space. The earth, which had seemed 

 to surpass in importance every orb in existence, was 

 seen to be a mere point in the solar system, and in 

 turn the solar system was seen to be a mere point in 

 the universe of stars, the stellar system (though so 

 vast that it appeared infinite by comparison with all 

 that men had heretofore imagined respecting space), 

 to be as nothing in the real universe. With the widen- 

 ing of men's ideas respecting space should have come 

 a widening of their ideas respecting time, until from of 

 the few thousands of years over which they had extended 

 their survey, they had learned to recognise the millions 



