284 Canadian Record of Science. 



jjrovided by the lucid instruction of Darwin and Wallace, it 

 was beyond the power of the human mind to grasp and use 

 as biological research the great wealth of minute anatomical 

 and physiological details. The previous idea of the inde- 

 pendent creation of each species of animal and plant to a 

 little Garden of Eden of its own must appear puerile and ab- 

 surd to the young naturalists of the present day ; but in my 

 own College days to have expressed any doubt on the subject, 

 would have involved a sure and certain pluck from the ex- 

 aminer. I remember well tbat I first obtained a copy of 

 Darwin's " Origin of Species" in San Francisco when on my 

 way home from a three years' sojourn among the red In- 

 dians in the Eocky Mountains. Having heard nothing of 

 the controversies, I received the teaching with enthusiasm, 

 and felt very much surprised on returning to my alma mater 

 to find that I was treated as a heretic and a backslider. 

 Nowadays it is difficult to realise what all the fuss and fierce 

 controversy was about, and the rising school of naturalists 

 have much cause for congratulation that they can start fair 

 on a well assured logical basis of thought, and steer clear of 

 the many complicated and purely ideal systems which were 

 formerly in vogue for explaining the intentions of the 

 Creator and for torturing the unfortunate students. The 

 doctrine of evolution was the simple-minded acceptance of 

 the invariability of cause and effect in the organic world as 

 in the inorganic ; and to understand his subject in any 

 branch of natural science, the learner has now only to apply 

 himself to trace in minutest detail the successive steps in 

 the development of the phenomena he desires to study. 

 With energetic leaders educated in such views, and who, 

 after their arrival in the colony, felt less controversial re- 

 straint, it is not wonderful that natural history, and espe- 

 cially biology, should have attracted so many ■ardent work- 

 ers, and that the results should have been so good. A rough 

 test may be applied by comparing the number of species of 

 animals and plants which had been described before the 

 foundation of the colony and those up to the present time. 

 In 1840, Dr. Gray's list in Deiffenbach's work gives the 



