vin TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES 105 



equally to organic as to inorganic existence," can find little 

 support from the writings of any who had made the 

 diversities of organic life their special study. It was, in fact, 

 in opposition to the views then held by most naturalists, and 

 chiefly from a profound and philosophical analysis of the laws 

 which govern the physical universe, that, reasoning from the 

 general to the special, he came to the conclusion that " at 

 least, as a philosophical conjecture, the idea of transmutation of 

 species under adequate changes of condition, and in incalculably 

 long periods of time, seems supported by fair analogy and 

 probability." 



Very shortly after, however, these views received an 

 immense stimulus by the working out of a necessary comple- 

 ment to the main theory, one which was absolutely essential 

 to its general reception namely, a suggestion of a possible 

 and intelligible modus operandi almost simultaneously by 

 the studies of Wallace amid the exuberant displays of nature 

 in the unexplored forests of the Malayan archipelago, and by 

 the patient accumulation and careful and candid examination 

 of fact upon fact, drawn from every branch of biological 

 science, and all converging on the theory of " the origin of 

 species l)y means of natural selection" by the great naturalist l 

 whose name is now so thoroughly identified with the entire 

 transmutation hypothesis, that already in the German book- 

 sellers' catalogues " Darwinismus " is made a prominent 

 subdivision in their classification of scientific literature ; and 

 in this country "^Darwinism " is the term popularly, if not 

 quite correctly, applied to the general doctrine of " organic 

 evolution." 



In reference to the effect which the publication of these 

 researches has produced, the learned and judicious President of 

 the Linnaean Society, Mr. Bentham, in his last anniversary 

 address, says that " the investigation of the origin, development, 

 and life history of species or races has been termed the great 

 problem of the day" ; and the impulse they have given to the 

 study of biology in general, and to our special branch in 

 particular, is not exaggerated by the eminent German anatomist 

 Gegenbaur in stating, in a work just published, that " the 



1 Charles Darwin was grandson of Erasmus Darwin, mentioned above. 



