lxx REPORT—1868. 
but that to Mr. Darwin’s enunciation of the doctrine of Pangenesis we owe it 
that we have the clearest and most systematic réswmé of the many wonderful 
phenomena of reproduction and inheritance that has yet appeared; and 
against the guarded entertainment of the hypothesis, or speculation if you 
will, as a means of correlating these phenomena, nothing can be urged in the 
present state of science. The President of the Linnean Society, a proverbially 
cautious naturalist, thus well expresses his own ideas of Pangenesis :—* If,” 
he says, “we take into consideration how familiar mathematical signs and 
symbols make us with numbers and combinations, the actual realization of 
which is beyond all human capacity, how inconceivably minute must be 
those emanations which most powerfully affect our sense of smell and our 
constitutions, and if, discarding all preventions, we follow Mr. Darwin, step 
by step, applying his suppositions to the facts set before us, we must, I think, 
admit that they may explain some, and are not incompatible with others ; and 
it appears to me that Pangenesis will be admitted by many as a provisional 
hypothesis, to be further tested and to be discarded only when a more 
plausible one shall be brought forward.” 
Ten years have elapsed since the publication of ‘ The Origin of Species by 
Natural Selection,’ and it is therefore not too early now to ask what 
progress that bold theory has made in scientific estimation. The most widely 
circulated of all the journals that give science a prominent place on their title- 
pages, the * Athenzeum,’ has very recently told to every country where the 
English language is read, that Mr. Darwin’s theory is a thing of the past, 
that Natural Selection is rapidly declining in scientific favour, and that, as 
regards the above two volumes on the variations of animals and plants under 
domestication, they “‘ contain nothing more in support of origin by selection, 
than a more detailed reasseveration of his guesses founded on the so-called 
variations of pigeons.” 
Let us examine for ourselves into the truth of these inconsiderate state- 
ments. Since the ‘ Origin’ appeared ten years ago, it has passed through 
four English editions, two American, two German, two French, several 
Russian, a Dutch, and an Italian; whilst of the work on Variation, which 
first left the publisher’s house not seven months ago, two English, a German, 
Russian, American, and Italian editions are already in circulation. So far 
from Natural Selection being a thing of the past, it is an accepted doctrine 
with almost every philosophical naturalist, including, it will always be under- 
stood, a considerable proportion who are not prepared to admit that it ac- 
counts for all Mr. Darwin assigns to it. 
Reviews on ‘ The Origin of Species’ are still pouring in from the con- 
tinent ; and Agassiz, in one of the addresses which he issued to his collobora- 
teurs on their late voyage to the Amazons, directs their attention to this 
theory as a primary object of the expedition they were then undertaking. 
I need only add, that of the many eminent naturalists who have accepted it, 
not one has been known to abandon it; that it gains adherents steadily ; and 
that it is par excellence an avowed favourite with the rising schools of natura- 
lists; perhaps, indeed, too much so, for the young are apt to accept such 
theories as articles of faith, and the creed of the student is but too likely to 
become the shibboleth of the future professor. 
The scientific writers who have publicly rejected one or both of the 
theories of continuous evolution and of natural selection, take their stand 
upon physical or metaphysical grounds, or both. Of those who rely on the 
metaphysical, their arguments are usually strongly imbued with theological 
prejudice and even odium, and as such are beyond the pale of scientific 
