THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS n 



Ez, fer instance, thet rubber-trees fust begun bearin' 

 Wen p'litikkle conshunces come into wearin', — 

 Thet the fears of a monkey, whose holt chanced to fail, 

 Drawed the vertibry out to a prehensile tail.' 



The year of the Manchester meeting, 1887, was the fiftieth anni- 

 versary, and we are now celebrating the Centenary, of the entry in 

 Darwin's pocket-book : 



' In July opened first note-book on Transmutation of Species. 

 Had been greatly struck from about the month of previous March 

 on character of South American fossils, and species on Galapagos 

 Archipelago. These facts (especially latter), origin of all my views.' 



It is especially interesting to recall that these views, as Professor 

 Newton told us in his address to D, the Biological Section, did not 

 include Natural Selection which only came into Darwin's mind 

 when he read Malthus, On Population, in October, 1838. Newton, 

 who had read the proof-sheets of the great Life of Darwin, pub- 

 lished later in 1887, then spoke of Wallace's independent discovery, 

 made twenty years after Darwin's, a discovery suggested to him also 

 by reflecting on Malthus, and of the friendship between the two 

 great men to whom this fruitful conception had come, referring the 

 cynic who would ' point the finger of scorn at the petty quarrels in 

 which naturalists unfortunately at times engage ' to this ' greatest 

 of all cases, where scientific rivalry not only did not interfere with, 

 but even strengthened, the good-feeling which existed between two 

 of the most original investigators.' And here I cannot resist the 

 desire to quote a part of the speech made by Wallace at the most 

 thrilling scientific gathering I have ever attended — the fiftieth 

 anniversary of the Darwin-Wallace Essay read before the Linnean 

 Society on July i, 1858, only twelve days after the arrival of Wallace's 

 letter and manuscript from the Moluccas. Wallace then said, on 

 July I, 1908 : 



' The idea came to me, as it had come to Darwin, in a sudden flash 

 of insight : it was thought out in a few hours . . . and sent off to 

 Darwin — all within one week, /was then (as often since) the " young 

 man in a hurry " : he, the painstaking and patient student, seeking 

 ever the full demonstration of the truth that he had discovered, 

 rather than to achieve immediate personal fame. ... If the per- 

 suasion of his friends had prevailed with him, and he had published 

 his theory, after ten years'^ — fifteen years' — or even eighteen years' 

 elaboration of it — / should have had no part in it whatever, and he 

 would have been at once recognised, and should be ever recognised, 

 as the sole and undisputed discoverer and patient investigator of the 

 great law of " Natural Selection," in all its far-reaching con- 

 sequences.' ^^ 



*^ Darwin-Wallace Celebration of the Linnean Society of London, 190S, pp. 6, 7. 



