132 RECENT ADVANCES IN NATURAL SCIENCE ix 



that reception which has been accorded to the new views of 

 biology. 



Ought not the history of those discoveries and the contro- 

 versies to which they gave rise, to be both a warning and an 

 encouragement ? Those who hoped and those who feared that 

 faith would be destroyed by them, have been equally mis- 

 taken ; and is it not probable that the same result will follow 

 the great biological discoveries and controversies of the present 

 day ? 



In stating thus briefly what is the issue of these dis- 

 coveries, as generally understood and accepted by men of 

 science, I have done all that I promised, and must leave, in 

 far more competent hands, the part of the subject especially 

 appropriate for discussion at this meeting. I may, however, 

 perhaps be allowed to put a few plain and simple considerations 

 before you, which may have some bearing upon the subject, and 

 which have no pretensions to novelty, though being often lost 

 sight of, their repetition may do no harm. 



I said at the commencement of this paper that it has long 

 been admitted by all educated persons, whatever their religious 

 faith may be, that that very universal, but still most wonderful 

 process, the commencement and gradual development of a new 

 individual of whatever living form, whether plant, animal, or 

 man, takes place according to definite and regularly acting 

 laws, without miraculous interposition. Further than this, I 

 believe that every one will admit that the production of the 

 various races or breeds of domestic animals is brought about 

 by similar means. We do not think it necessary to call in 

 any special intervention of creative power to produce a short- 

 horned race of cattle, or to account for the difference between 

 a bull dog and a greyhound, a Dorking and a Cochin- China 

 fowl. The gradual modifications by which these races were 

 produced, having taken place under our own eyes as it were, 

 we are satisfied that they are the consequence of what we call 

 natural laws, modified and directed in these particular cases 

 by man's agency. We have even gone farther, having long 

 admitted, without the slightest fear of producing a collision 

 with religious faith, that variation has taken place among 

 animals in a wild state, producing local races of more or less 



