8 NATURE STUDIES. 



closing words of this treatise may fitly here be quoted. 

 After speaking of the distaste with which many 

 persons would probably regard his conclusions as to 

 the descent of man, and then touching on the hopes 

 which the advance of the human race in past ages 

 seems fairly to justify, he says we are not, however, 

 concerned "with hopes or fears, but only with the 

 truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. 

 I have given the evidence to the best of my ability, 

 and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that 

 man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which 

 feels for the most debased, with benevolence which 

 extends not only to other men, but to the humblest 

 living creature, with his god-like intellect which has 

 penetrated into the movements and constitution of 

 the solar system with all these exalted powers man 

 still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of 

 his lowly origin." 



After the publication of his first great work, Darwin? 

 continued to gather evidence tending to strengthen 

 his theory. In 1862 he published his remarkable 

 work on the "Fertilization of Orchids;" and in 1867 

 his " Domesticated Animals and Cultivated Plants, or 

 the Principles of Variation, Inheritance, Reversion, 

 Crossing, Interbreeding, and Selection under Do- 

 mestication." In 1872 Mr. Darwin published " The 

 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals;" 

 in 1875, " Insectivorous Plants;" in 1876, "Cross 

 and Self-Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom ;" 

 and in 1877, "Different Forms of Flowers in Plants 



