NATURAL HISTORY — ZOOLOGY. 207 



Darwinian theory had to deal, more especially those vital tendencies 

 of allied species which seemed independent of all external agents. 

 Mr. Lubbock expressed his willingness to accept the Darwinian 

 hypothesis in the absence of any better. He would, however, ex- 

 press his conviction, that time was not an essential element in these 

 changes. Time alone produced no change. 



Dr. Hooker being called upon by the President to state his views 

 of the botanical aspect of the question, observed that the Bishop of 

 Oxford having asserted that all men of science were hostile to Mr. 

 Darwin's hypothesis, wherea3 he himself was favourable to it, he 

 could not presume to address the audience as a scientific authority. 

 As, however, he had been asked for his opinion, he would briefly give 

 it. In the first place, his lordship, in his eloquent address, had, as 

 it appeared to him, completely misunderstood Mr. Darwin's hypo- 

 thesis. His lordship intimated that this maintained the doctrine of 

 the transmutation of existing species one into another, and had con- 

 founded this with that of the successive development of species by 

 variation and natural selection. The first of these doctrines was so 

 wholly opposed to the facts, reasonings, and results of Mr. Darwin's 

 work, that he could not conceive how any one who had read it could 

 make such a mistake — the whole book, indeed, being a protest 

 against that doctrine. Then, again, with regard to the general phe- 

 nomena of species, he understood his lordship to affirm that these 

 did not present characters that should lead careful and philosophical 

 naturalists to favour Mr. Darwin's views. To this assertion Dr. 

 Hooker's experience of the vegetable kingdom was diametrically 

 opposed. He considered that at least one-half of the known kinds 

 of plants were disposable in groups, of which the species were con- 

 nected by varying characters common to all in that group, and sen- 

 sibly differing in some individuals only of each species ; so much so, 

 that if each group be likened to a cobweb, and one species be sup- 

 posed to stand in the centre of that web, its varying characters 

 might be compared to the radiating and concentric threads, when 

 the other species would be represented by the points of union of 

 these ; in short, that the general characteristics of orders, genera, 

 and species amongst plants differed in degrees only from those of 

 varieties, and afforded the strongest countenance to Mr. Darwin's 

 hypothesis. As regarded his own acceptation of Mr. Darwin's 

 views, he expressly disavowed having adopted them as a creed. He 

 knew no creeds in scientific matters. He had early begun the 

 study of natural science under the idea that species were original 

 creations ; and it should be steadily kept in view that this was 

 merely another hypothesis, which in the abstract was neither more 

 nor less entitled to acceptance than Mr. Darwin's ; neither was it, in 

 the present state of science, capable of demonstration, and each 

 must be tested by its power of explaining the mutual dependence 

 of the phenomena of life. For many years he had held to the old 

 hypothesis, having no better established one to adopt ; though the 

 progress of botany had in the interim developed no new facts that 

 favoured it, but a host of most suggestive objections to it. On the 



