NATURE 



145 



THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1882 



CHARLES DARWIN 1 

 IV. 

 T N attempting to estimate the influence which Mr. 

 -^ Darwin's writings have exerted on the progress of 

 botanical science, a little consideration will show that we 

 must discriminate between the indirect effect which his 

 views have had on botanical research generally, and 

 the direct results of his own contributions. No doubt in 

 a sense the former will seem in the retrospect to over- 

 shadow the latter. For in his later writings Mr. Darwin 

 was content to devote himself to the consideration of 

 problems — with an insight and patience essentially his 

 own — which, in a limited field, brought his theoretical 

 views to a detailed test, and so may ultimately seem to be 

 somewhat merged in them. It is wonderful enough that 

 so great a master in biological science should, at an ad- 

 vanced age, have been content to work with all the fervour 

 and assiduity of youth at phenomena of vegetable life 

 apparently minute and of the most special kind. But to 

 him they were not minute, but instinct with a significance 

 that the professed botanical world had for the most part 

 missed seeing in them failing the point of view which .Mr. 

 Darwin himself supplied. It is not too much to say that 

 each of his botanical investigations, taken on its own 

 merits, would alone have made the reputation of any 

 ordinary botanist. 



Mr. Darwin's attitude towards botany, as indeed to 

 biological studies generally, it should always be remem- 

 bered was in his early life essentially that of a naturalist 

 of the school of Linnaeus and Humboldt — a point of view 

 unfortunately now perhaps a little out of fashion. Nature 

 in all its aspects spoke to his feelings with a voice that 

 was living and direct. The writer of these lines can well 

 remember the impression which it made upon him to hear 

 Mr. Darwin gently complain that some of this warm j 

 enthusiasm for nature, as it presents itself unanalysed to 

 ordinary healthy vision, seemed to be a little dulled in the 

 younger naturalists of the day, who were apt to be some- 

 what cramped by the limits of their work-rooms. The pages 

 of the "Journal of Researches" show no such restraint, 

 but abound with passages in which Mr. Darwin's ever 

 unstudied and simple language is carried by the force of 

 warm impression and a perfect joy in nature to a level of 

 singular beauty. One passage may be quoted as an 

 illustration : it is from the description of Bahia in 

 Chapter xxi. : — 



" When quietly walking along the shady pathways, and 

 admiring each successive view, I wished to find language 

 to express my ideas. Epithet after epithet was found too 

 weak to convey to those who have not visited the inter- 

 tropical regions, the sensation of delight which the mind 

 experiences. I have said that the plants in a hothouse 

 fail to communicate a just idea of the vegetation, jet I 

 must recur to it. The land is one great wild, untidy, 

 luxuriant hothouse, made by Nature for herself, but taken 

 possession of by man, who has studded it with gay 

 houses and formal gardens. How great would be the 

 desire in every admirer of nature to behold, if such were 

 possible, the scenery of another planet ! Yet to every 

 person in Europe, it may be truly said, that at the dis- 



'tCootinued from p, 100. 



Vol. xxvi. — No. 659 



tance of only a few degrees from his native soil, the 

 glories of another world are opened to him In my last 

 walk I stopped again and again to gaze on these beauties, 

 and endeavoured to fix in my mind for ever, an impres- 

 sion which at the time I knew sooner or later must fail. 

 The form of the orange-tree, the cocoa-nut, the palm, the 

 mango, the tree-fern, the banana, will remain clear and 

 separate : but the thousand beauties which unite these 

 into one perfect scene must fade away ; yet they will 

 leave, like a tale heard in childhood, a picture full of 

 indistinct, but most beautiful figuies.'' 



A spirit such as this, penetrating an intelligence such 

 as Mr. Darwin's, would not content itself with the super- 

 ficial interest of form and colour. These, in his eyes, 

 were the outward and visible signs of the inner arcana. 

 The fascination of sense which the former imposed upon 

 him but stimulated his desire to unveil the latter. In the 

 Galapagos we are not then surprised to find him ardently 

 absorbed in the problems which the extraordinary dis- 

 tribution of the plants, no less than of other organisms, 

 presented : — 



'• I indiscriminately collected everything in flower on 

 the different islands, and fortunately kept my collections 

 separate." 



After tabulating the results which they yielded after 

 systematic determination, he proceeds : 



" Hence we have the truly wonderful fact, that in James 

 Island, of the thirty-eight Galapageian plants, or those 

 found in no other part of the world, thirty are exclusively 

 confined to this one island ; and in Albemarle Island, of 

 the twenty-six aboriginal Galapageian plants, twenty-two 

 are confined to this one island, that is, only four are known 

 to grow on the other islands of the Archipelago ; and so 

 on, as shown in the above table, with the plants from 

 Chatham and Charles Island." 



It is impossible in reading the Origin of Species not to 

 perceive how deeply Mr. Darwin had been impressed by 

 the problems presented by such singularities of plant dis- 

 tribution as he met with in the Galapagos. And of such 

 problems up to the time of its publication no intelligible 

 explanation had seemed possible. Sir Joseph Hooker had 

 indeed prepared the ground by bringing into prominence, 

 in numerous important papers, the no less striking pheno- 

 mena which were presented when the vegetation of large 

 areas came to be analysed and compared. No one there- 

 fore could estimate more justly what Mr. Darwin did for 

 those who worked in this field. How the whole matter 

 stood after the publication of the Origin of Species cannot 

 be better estimated than from the summary of the position 

 contained in Sir Joseph Hooker's recent address to the 

 Geographical Section of the meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation at York. 



"Before the publication of the doctrine of the origin of 

 species by variation and natural selection, all reasoning 

 on their distribution was in subordination to the idea that 

 these were permanent and special creations ; just as, 

 before it was shown that species were often older than the 

 islands and mountains they inhabited, naturalists had to 

 make their theories accord with the idea that all migra- 

 tion took place under existing conditions of land and sea. 

 Hitherto the modes of dispersion of species, genera, and 

 families had been traced, but the origin of representative 

 species, genera, and families, remained an enigma ; these 

 could be explained only by the supposition that the locali- 

 ties where they occurred presented conditions so similar 

 that they favoured the creation of similar organisms 

 which failed to account for representation occurring in 



