Progress of Botany. 49 



graded forms of life be contemporaneous if there has been 

 evolution from the lower to the higher ? If the lower 

 had ceased to exist when the higher were developed, color 

 would be lent to the theory that the higher evolved from 

 the lower; but the co-existence of an infinite series of beings, 

 ranging from the micrococcus up to man, the lord of all 

 things visible, all starting from the simple cell, satisfies 

 the ordinary observer and thinker that the presumption 

 is that things have gone on as they are now going, since 

 both the higher and the lower started out on their career 

 in the present conditions. Especially does the inertia of 

 the popular mind present a stolid obstacle to the Darwinian 

 theory when men of science speak of the countless mil- 

 lions of years needed to bring the phenomena of nature 

 up to the present stage of the universe. The inability to 

 grasp a situation thus conditioned produces a state of 

 mind which amounts to incredulity. 



Twenty years ago it was the vogue for a person 



claiming to have the scientific spirit to profess adherence 



to the views of Darwin, but during the two last decades 



of the century a reaction set in, so that even Professor 



Haeckel in a recent work, " The World Kiddie," laments 



over the fact that practically all his former pupils and 



disciples, who have attained prominence in Germany, 



have repudiated his Darwinian views. The number of 



naturalists who oppose it, either in toto or at least in its 



original form, is constantly on the increase, in the old 



world. One used to hear it said that there was not a 



naturalist of any considerable repute who was not an 



evolutionist, but that can no longer be said. Indeed, it 



ought not to have been said at any time, when, men like 



Virchow and Agassiz rejected the entire Darwinian 



hypothesis. However, it is not a question that is to be 



settled by counting heads or citing names. Heads and 



names were against it in 1859 and it looks as if they 



would ere long be against it once more. At all events, 



4 



