July i, 1909] 



NATURE 



he replied, " far be it from me to countenance anything I 

 contrary to your established laws ; but I have set an acorn, ! 

 which, when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what 

 will be the fruit thereof." Through John Harvard, of 

 Emmanuel, Cambridge became the mother of our colleges. 

 Did not Emmanuel beget Harvard, and Harvard beget 

 Vale, and Harvard and Yale beget Princeton and other 

 descendants to the third and fourth generation? We thus 

 salute to-day the venerable but ever youthful ancestor of 

 many of the American universities, academies, and insti- 

 tutes of science, national and State museums, represented 

 here, and in large part guided by true sons of the true 

 daughters of the Alma Mater on the Cam. Through the 

 survival of the best our political guidance is also passing 

 more and more into the hands of men trained in these 

 same daughter colleges. A son of Yale succeeds a son of 

 Harvard as President of the United States. If your 

 university men are leading the Empire ours are leading the 

 nation. 



Noble offspring, too, of the many pious foundations of 

 the old University, of Trinity, of Christ's, are the great 

 men too numerous to name, among whom there especially 

 rise in our minds Newton, Clerk-Maxwell, Balfour, and, 

 above all, Darwin. Newton opened to us the new heavens 

 and Darwin the new earth. Clerlv-Maxwell, with Hertz, 

 enabled us to converse across the sea through the blue 

 £Ether. The well-beloved Balfour set forth Darwinism in 

 embryology ; would that his life had been spared for the 

 more difficuit problems of our day. H in our hours of 

 struggle with the mysteries of nature these are our leaders 

 and companions, so in our hours of ease and relaxation do 

 we not turn again to sons of Cambridge for spiritual 

 refreshment, to the verse of Milton, of Byron, of Words- 

 worth and Tennyson, all richly imbued with the nature 

 >pirit, or to the no less masterly prose of Thackeray and 

 -Macaulay? 



Far away are the giant forces of our Republic, the roar 

 of her machinery and her world of trade, yet more apparent 

 than real is the independence of her development. There 

 still prevails the potent unifying influence of mind and 

 motive, bred in quiet places like this, ever creating new 

 generations of leaders in science, in literature, and in 

 government, and ever renewing the strong bonds of friend- 

 ship and of union. 



What can we add to the chorus of appreciation of the 

 great pupil of Christ's, which has come from American 

 cnllege, Press, and pulpit, since the opening of this 

 anniversary year? Only a few words of personal 

 impression. 



To us Darwin, more perhaps than any other naturalist, 

 seems greatest in the union of a high order of genius 

 with rare simplicity and transparency of thought. Dwell- 

 ing on this lucid quality and on the vast range of his 

 observation, from the most minute to the grandest rela- 

 tions in nature, does not the image arise of a perfected 

 optical instrument, in which all personal equation, 

 aberration, and refraction is eliminated, and through 

 which, as it were, we gaze with a new vision into the 

 marvellous forms and processes of the living world? With 

 this wondrous lens our countrymen Cope and Marsh pene- 

 trated far deeper into fossil life than their predecessor 

 Joseph Leidy — thus the arid deserts of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains gave up their petrified dead as proofs of Darwinism. 

 Through its new powers Hyatt, Morse, Packard, and 

 Brooks saw far more than their master Louis ."^gassiz, 

 and drew fresh proofs of the law of descent from the 

 historic waters of New England. From the very end of 

 the new world, where the youthful Darwin received his 

 first impressions of the mutability of the forms of life, 

 came a clearer vision of the ancient life of Patagonia. 



The new vision opened upon a period of great men ; 

 and this again suggests a reminiscence. Thirty years ago 

 two of the present delegates arrived in Cambridge as 

 •students. They heard Clerk-Maxwell developing his 

 theories before the Cambridge Philosophical Society. 

 Michael Foster was in his prime and lecturing in his 

 inimitable manner. Francis Maitland Balfour had just 

 completed his " Elasmobranch Fishes," and was working' 

 five hours a day on his " Comparative Embryology "; his 

 lectures were brilliant and inspiring ; his relations with 

 ■students altogether ideal ; in his rooms, among many 



NO. 2070, VOL. Si] 



others, one met Lankester and Moseley, and enjoyed a 

 rare flow of conversation on all subjects except biology. 

 Either as students or as young instructors were Sedgwick, 

 Forbes, Shipley, Weldon, Haddon, Harmer, and others. 

 In this Senate House Robert Browning, Spottiswoode, 

 president of the Royal Society, and Huxley received their 

 honorary degrees. Throughout the winter Huxley was 

 delivering his remarkable lectures, " Darwinism in Com- 

 parative Anatomy," suggestive and with occasional flashes 

 of humour, still strong and full of fire, but beginning to 

 show the effect of years of overwork, of public service, 

 and research. About once a week he came among his 

 students. One day an unusual stir or thrill passed along 

 the tables as with him entered Darwin, his first and only 

 visit to a modern biological laboratory. Darwin paused 

 for a few moments' conversation, and one received the 

 strong impression of a ruddy face, benevolent blue eyes, 

 very deep-set beneath the massive overhanging brow — a 

 wonderful effect of kindliness and of the far-off world 

 survey of a great naturalist. 



What of Darwin's influence in the future? While it is 

 doubtful if human speculation about life can ever again 

 be so tangential or so astray on ultimate causes as in the 

 pre-Darwinian past of fifty years ago, it is probable, in 

 fact it is daily becoming more evident, that the destiny 

 of speculation is less the tangent than the maze — the maze 

 of several lesser principles, with as many prophets calling 

 to us to seek this turning or that. There are those who, 

 in loyal advocacy of his system, feel that we shall not 

 get much nearer life than Darwin did : but this is to 

 abandon his progressive leadership, for if ever a master 

 defined the unknown and pointed the way of investiga- 

 tion, certainly it was Darwin. In the wonderful round of 

 addresses in his honour of this centennial year and in the 

 renewed critical study of his life and writings, the recogni- 

 tion that Darwin opened the way has come to many with 

 the force of a fresh discovery. It is true that he left a 

 system, and that he loved it as his own, but his forceful, 

 self-unsparing, and suggestive criticisms show that if he 

 were living in these days of Waagen, of Weismann, of 

 Mendel, and of de Vries, he would be in the front line 

 of inquiry, armed with inventive genius, with matchless 

 assemblage of fact, with experiment and verification, and 

 not least with incomparable candour and good-will. This 

 bequest of a noble method is hardlv less precious than the 

 immortal content of the " Origin of Species " itself. 



In conclusion, we delegates, naturalists, and friends, 

 desire to present to Christ's College, as a memorial of our 

 visit, a portrait of Charles Darwin in bronze, the work of 

 our countryman William Couper, a portrait which we trust 

 will convey to this and future generations of Cambridge 

 students some impression of the rugged simplicity, as well 

 as of the intellectual grandeur, of the man v%'e revere and 

 honour. 



The speech next delivered by Sir Ray Lankester 

 was an eloquent appreciation of Darwin's work and 

 an unequivocal vindication of the theory of the orig'in 

 of species by the preservation of minute variations 

 favourable to existence under prevailing natural con- 

 ditions. 



Sir R.\y Lankester, K.C.B., F.R.S. 



I feel it a great honour to be called upon to speak 

 here to-day, and to stand, on behalf of the naturalists of 

 the British Enrpire, by the side of the distinguished men 

 whose orations you have just heard. 



I think that the one thing about Charles Darwin which 

 the large majority of British naturalists would wish to 

 be to-day proclaimed, in the first place — with no doubtful 

 or qualifying phrase — is that, in their judgment, after 

 these fifty years of examination and testing, his " theory 

 of the origin of species by means of natural selection or 

 the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for 

 life " remains whole and sound and convincing, in spite 

 of every attenipt to upset it. 



I am not stating more than the simple truth when I 

 say that, in the judgment of those who are best acquainted 

 with living things in their actual living surroundings, 

 " natural selection " retains the position which Mr. Darwin 



