8o 



NA TURE 



[yune 4, 1874 



Part Geology ; Admiralty Manual of Scientific Inquiry, 

 349. Third ed., 1859. 



Two British naturalists, Robert Brown and Charles 

 Darwin, have, more than any others, impressed their in- 

 fluence upon Science in this nineteenth century. Unlike 

 as these men and their works were and are, wc may most 

 readily subserve the present purpose in what we are called 

 upon to say of the latter by briefly co:n paring and con- 

 • trasting the two. 



Robert Brown died sixteen years ago, full of years 

 and scientific honours, and he seems to have finished, 

 several years earlier, all the scientific work that he had 

 undertaken. To the other, Charles Darwin, a fair 

 number of productive years may yet remain, and are 

 earnestly hoped for. Both enjoyed the great advantage 

 of being all their lives long free from any exacting pro- 

 fessional duties or cares, and so were able in the main to 

 apply themselves to research without distraction and 

 according to their bent. Beth, at the beginning of their 

 career, were attached to expeditions of exploration in the 

 southern hemisphere, where they amassed rich stores of 

 observation and materials, and probably struck out, while 

 in the field, some of the best ideas which they subse- 

 quently developed. They worked in different fields and 

 upon different methods ; only in a single instance, so far 

 as we know, have they handled the same topic ; and in 

 this the more penetrating insight of the younger natu- 

 ralist into an interesting general problem may be appealed 

 to in justification of a comparison which some will deem 

 presumptuous. Be this as it may, there will probably be 

 little dissent from the opinion that the characteristic trait 

 common to the two is an unrivalled scientific sagacity. 

 In this these two naturalists seem to us, each in his way, 

 pre-eminent. There is a characteristic likeness, too — 

 underlying much difference — in their admirable manner 

 of dealing with facts closely, and at first hand, without 

 the interposition of the formal laws, vague ideal concep- 

 tions, or "glittering generalities" which some philo- 

 sophical naturalists make large use of. 



A likeness may also be discerned in the way in which 

 the works or contributions of predecessors and contem- 

 poraries are referred to. The brief historical summaries 

 prefixed to many of Mr. Brown's papers are models of 

 judicial conscientiousness. And Mr. Darwin's evident 

 delight at discovering that someone else has " said his 

 good things before him," or has been on the verge of 

 uttering them, seemingly equals that of making the dis- 

 covery himself. It reminds one of Goethe's insisting that 

 his views in Morphology must have been held belore 

 him and must be somewhere on record, so obviously 

 just and natural did they appear to him. 



Considering the quiet and retired lives led by both 

 these men, and the prominent place they are likely to 

 occupy in the history of Science, the contrast between 

 them as to contemporary and popular fame is very 

 remarkable. While Mr. Brown was looked up to with 

 the greatest reverence by all the learned botanists, 

 he was scarcely heard of by anyone else ; and out of 

 botany he was unknown to Science except as the dis- 

 coverer of the Brownian motion of minute particles, which 

 discovery was promulgated in a privately printed pam- 

 phlet that few have ever seen. Although Mr. Darwin 



had been for twenty years well and widely known for 

 his " Naturalist's Journal," his works on " Coral Islands," 

 on " Volcanic Islands," and especially for his researches 

 on the Barnacles, it was not till about fifteen years 

 ago that his name became popularly famous. Ever since 

 no scientific name has been so widely spoken. Many 

 others have had hypotheses or systems named after 

 them, but no one else that we know of a department of 

 bibliogrr.phy. The nature of his latest researches ac- 

 counts for most of the difference, but not for all. The 

 Origin of Species is a fascinating topic, having interests 

 and connections with every branch of Science, natural 

 and moral. The investigation of recondite affinities is 

 very dry and special ; its questions, processes, and results 

 alike — although in part generally presentable in the shape 

 of Morphology — are mainly, like the higher mathematics, 

 unintelligible except to those who make them a subject 

 of serious study. They are especially so when pre- 

 sented in Mr. Brown's manner. Perhaps no naturalist 

 ever recorded the results of his investigations in fewer 

 words and with greater precision than Robert Brown : 

 certainly no one ever took more pains to state nothing 

 beyond the precise point in question. Indeed we have 

 sometimes fancied that he preferred to enwrap rather 

 than to explain his meaning ; to put it into such 

 a form that, unless you follow Solomon's injunc- 

 tion and dig for the wisdom as for hid treasure 

 you may hardly apprehend it until you have found 

 it all out for yourself, when you will have the satis- 

 faction of perceiving that Mr. Brown not only knew all 

 about it, but put it upon record long before. Very different 

 from this is the way in which Mr. Darwin takes his 

 readers into his confidence, freely displays to them the 

 sources of his information, and the working of his mind, 

 and even shares with them all his doubts and misgivings, 

 while in a clear and full exposition he sets forth the 

 reasons which have guided him to his conclusions. These 

 you may hesitate or decline to adopt, but you feel sure 

 that they have been presented with perfect fairness ; and 

 if you think of arguments against them you may be con- 

 fident that they have all been duly considered before. 



The sagacity which characterises these two naturalists 

 is seen in their success in finding decisive instances, and 

 their sure insight into the meaning of things. As an in- 

 stance of the latter on Mr. Darwin's part, and a justifica- 

 tion of our venture to compare him with \}t\t facile princeps 

 l'otaiU(-onivi,vic will, in conclusion, allude to the single in- 

 stance in which they took the same subject in hand. In his 

 papers on the organs and modes of fecundation in Orchideae 

 and Asclepiadere, Mr. Brown refers more than once to 

 C. K. Sprengel's almost forgotten work, shows how the 

 structure of the flowers in these orders largely requires 

 the agency of insects for their fecundation, and is aware 

 that " in Asclepiadea: . . . the insect so readily passes 

 from one corolla to another that it not unfrequently visits 

 every flower of the umbeL" He must also have contem- 

 plated the transport of pollen from plant to plant by 

 wind and insects ; yet we know from another source that 

 he looked upon Sprengel's ideas as fantastic. Instead 

 of taking the single forward step which now seems so 

 obvious, he even hazarded the conjecture that the insect- 

 forms of some Orchidcous flowers are intended to deter 

 rather than to attract insects. And so the explanation of 



