Oct. ii, 1883] 



NATURE 



573 



before him, no European had ever entered. He was imprisoned 

 as a spy by King Melelek, of Shoa, but was eventually released 

 through the intercession of Marquis Antinori. He has brought 

 back with him numerous valuable maps and a large collection of 

 the fauna, flora, minerals, and other objects connected with the 

 regions he explored. 



Lieut. Wissmann is preparing to set out on a new expedi- 

 tion to the Upper Congo. 



The United States observing party at Point Barrow have 

 returned to Alaska, in route for San Franscisco. 



The French war steamer, which was sent out last year 

 with the French scientific mission to Cape Horn, is daily 

 expected with the party, who have spent their winter in this 

 remote part of the world. These observations have been carried 

 on in connection with the Polar observations as organi-ed by the 

 International Conference, and have been made from August, 



1882, to August, 18S3. 



"The Yearly Report of the Swis; Alpine Club" for 18S2, the 

 eighteenth volume of the series, contains many and various con- 

 tri utions towards a fuller knowledge of the Alps. Besides 

 valuable letterpress we are treated to excellent panora nas after 

 original drawings, coloured views, woodcuts, and cartographical 

 sketches. 



In one of a collection of lectures published at Heidelberg, 



1883, by the house of Carl Winter, A. von Lasaulx, the well- 

 known geologist, draws an ingenious parallel between Ireland 

 and Sicily, and attempts to explain the backward state of the 

 inhabitants of these two islands and the disorders of which they 

 have been the theatre by the nature of their geological strata, 

 the formation of their coasts and their positions. 



The last number of the Izvestia of the Rus-ian Geographical 

 Society, contains, besides minutes of proceedings, two papers 

 by Dr. Woeikof, on the diurnal period of the veloci'y of the 

 w ind in Russia, and on the distribution of heat in the oceans ; 

 a paper by Prof. Lenz, on the periodicity of auroras ; the annual 

 reports of the western and eastern Siberian branches of the 

 Society ; the end of M. Polyakoff s letters from Sakhalin, 

 wherein he describes his journey on boat down the Tym River 

 and on the eastern coast of Sakhalin ; and several notes. We 

 notice among these latter a list of forty-two places in Persia, 

 Attak, and Akhal-Tekke, the positions of which were deter- 

 mined by Capt. Gladysheff. 



THE EVOLUTIONARY POSITION 1 



T HAVE been requested by the Subjects Committee of the 

 Congress to place before you a brief statement of some of 

 the advances which have recently been made in natural science, 

 with a view to open a discussion upon their relations, real or 

 supposed, to religious belief. The particular advances which, 

 as 1 am given to understand, were especially in the minds of the 

 Committee in proposing this question, are those which have 

 resu'ted in the more or less general adoption by scientific men of 

 the view of the sequence of events which have taken place, and 

 are still taking place, in the universe, to which the term "evolu- 

 tion" is now commonly applied. 



All that is embraced by this term, the various realms of nature 

 in which its manifestati >ns are traced, the various shades of 

 meaning attached to it by different persons, would constitute far 

 too large and complex a subject to be treated of in the time to 

 which addresses to this meeting are wisely restricted. I will 

 therefore select for special consideration the only point in the 

 application of the theory upon which I can speak with any prac- 

 tical knowledge ; one which is, however, in the eye; of many of 

 very vital interest. It is the one, at all events, which at the 

 present moment attracts most attention ; the new ideas upon it 

 being received with enthusiasm by some, and with distrust, if 

 not with abhorrence, by others. 



The doctrine of continuity, or of direct relation of an event to 

 some preceding event according to a natural and orderly sequence 

 is now generally recognised in the inorganic world ; and although 

 the modern expansion of this doctrine as applied to the living 

 inhabitants of the earth appears to many so startling, and has 

 met with so much oppositioi, it is, in a more restricted applica- 



' The following address by Prof. Flower, F.R.S., President of the 

 ical Society, was given at the recent Church Congress as introductory 

 to a discussi .n on " Recent Advances in Natural Science in their Relation 

 to the Christian Faith." The address has been revised by the author. 



tion, a very old and widespread article of scientific as well as of 

 popular faith. 



Putting aside, as quite immaterial to the present discussion, 

 the still controverted question of the evidences of the produc- 

 tion of the lowest and most rudimentary forms of life from in- 

 organic matter, it may be stated as certain that there is no 

 rational and educated person, whatever his religious beliefs or 

 philosophical views, who is not convinced thai every individual 

 animal or plant, sufficiently highly organised to deserve such dis- 

 tinctive appellation, now existing upon the world, has been 

 produced from pre-existing parents by the operation of a series of 

 processes of the order to which the term natural is commonly 

 applied ; processes also fundamentally the same throughout the 

 whole range of living beings, however much modified in detail 

 to suit the various manifestations under which those beings are 

 presented to us. We feel absolutely certain, when we see a 

 horse, a bird, a butterfly, or an oak tree, that each was derived 

 from pre-existing parents more or less closely resembling itself. 

 Though we have no direct evidence of the fact in each individual 

 case, the knowledge derived from the combined observations of 

 an overwhelming number of analogous cases is of such a posi- 

 tive character, that we should entirely refuse to credit any one 

 who made the contrary assertion, and should feel satisfied that 

 he had been deluded by some error of observation. We cannot, 

 indeed, conceive of the sudden beginning of any such creatures, 

 either from nothing, from inorganic matter, or even from other 

 animals or plants totally unlike themselves. 



To persons whose opportunities of observation of animal and 

 plant life are limited to a comparatively few kinds, existing 

 under comparatively similar circumstances, and which observa- 

 tions moreover only extend over a comparatively limited period 

 of time, it appears that in each kind of animal or plant, such as 

 those just mentioned, individuals of various succeeding genera- 

 tions present a very close resemblance to each other. That they 

 often vary a little cannot escape careful observation, but the 

 deviations from the common characters of the kind to be noticed 

 by persons whose range of vision is thus limited are not striking, 

 and usually appear not to pass beyond certain bounds. Hence arose 

 the common idea, natural enough under such circumstances, but 

 which gradually developed itself, not only into a scientific 

 hypothesis, but even, it would appear, almost into an article of 

 religious belief, that the different kinds or " specie-," as they are 

 technically called, of animals and plants, had each its separate 

 origin, its fixed limits of variation, and could not under any 

 circumstances become modified or changed into any other form. 



This idea became deeply rooted in the human mind, in con- 

 sequence of the very long period during which it prevailed, the 

 horizon of observation having remained practically stationary 

 from the time man first began to observe and record the phenomena 

 of nature until little more than a century ago, when commenced 

 that sudden expansion of knowledge of the facts of the animal 

 and ve/etable world which has been steadily widening ever 

 since. Now it is important to observe that it is strictly pari 

 passu with the growth of knowledge of the facts, that the 

 theoretical views of nature have changed, and the older hypo- 

 thesis of species to which I have referred has gradually given 

 way to a new and different one. 



The expansion of the special branches of knowledge affecting 

 our views upon this subject has taken place in many different 

 directions, of which I can here only indicate the most striking. 



1. The discovery of enormous numbers of forms of life, the ex- 

 istence of which was entirely unknown a hundred years ago. The 

 increase of knowledge in tbis respect is something inconceivable 

 to th 1: e who have not followed its progress. Not only has the 

 number of well defined species known multiplied prodigiously, 

 but infinite series of gradations between what were formerly sup- 

 posed to be distinct species are being constantly brought to 

 light. The difficulty of giving any satisfactory definition of 

 what is meant by the term "species" is increasingly felt day by 

 day by practical zoologists, as evidenced by the introduction of 

 such terms as "sub-species," "permanent local variety," &c, 

 into general use, and especially by the wide differences ot 

 opinion as to the number or limits of the species included in any 

 given group of animals or plants among naturalists who have 

 made such group their special study. 



2. Vast increase in the knowledge of the intimate structure of 

 organic bodies, both as revealed by ordinary dissec'ion and by 

 microscopic examination, a method of investigation only brought 

 to perfection in very recent years. By the knowledge thus 

 acquired has been demonstrated the unity of plan pervading, 

 under diver e modifications, the different members of each 



