XX 



THE DARWIN CENTENARY. [April 23, 



further progress. It was at this time that Mr. Wallace and Mr. 

 Darwin made their happy suggestion. The two communications 

 were presented to the Linnean Society, on July i, 1858, practically 

 as a joint production. All the inflammable materials were at hand 

 for a disgraceful contention as to priority between two path-break- 

 ing pioneers. Each one was confident that he had found a plan by 

 which it was possible to cut one's way through a formidable tangle 

 of phenomena. But these great souls, Darwin and Wallace, joint 

 authors of the hypothesis, vied with each other to give the other 

 full credit for independent discovery. And more than this, they 

 searched for those who had thought out their thoughts before them, 

 and were rejoiced when they found that at least one thinker had 

 anticipated them both, and that very many thinkers had been near 

 the discovery. This noble example of magnanimity must be placed 

 among the factors which have created Darwin's immense influence. 

 The suggestion or hypothesis is chiefly a statement of admitted 

 facts. Both of these naturalists had been overwhelmed by the 

 luxuriance of life in the tropics and both had been readers of a 

 treatise in which the relations of numbers of living beings to space 

 and food had been intelligently treated. Surrounded by tropical 

 plants, and investigating tropical animals, they independently applied 

 the treatise they had been perusing to the conditions around them. 

 Wallace and Darwin observed what everybody knows, that in count- 

 less cases, the offspring largely outnumber the parents, and that this 

 necessarily brings about a struggle for space and food. They also 

 were much impressed by the wide variability of species, some 

 varieties turning slightly away from the parental type in one direc- 

 tion, and others in other directions. And thirdly they saw what 

 every one sees, that the conditions surrounding the organism are 

 undergoing changes in respect to light, heat, moisture and the pres- 

 ence of other organisms. And next, these two naturalists did what 

 no one else (save one) had ever done, namely, they put these three 

 factors together, and framed a suggestive hypothesis. The hypoth- 

 esis merely places a suggestion under all the foregoing facts, and 

 it is this — admitting, as everyone must, that there are more plants 

 to be grown and more mouths to be fed than there is room or food 

 for, is it not likely that the fittest among the varieties will, on the 



