﻿ANNIVEESAEY ADDEESS OF THE PEESLDENT. 



xxxix- 



field so sure to yield facts of the highest interest will long continue 

 to be explored by men as worthy of confidence in their ability as 

 those to whom the great trust is now confided. 



The last year has been signalized by the publication of the re- 

 markable work of Mr. Darwin, ' On the Oeigest oe Species/ which 

 has excited no ordinary degree of attention both at home and 

 abroad. I do not presume to offer any opinion on its merits, be- 

 cause my previous studies have not been of a kind to qualify me to 

 be a competent judge. But no one, however unprepared, can fail 

 to be struck with the truly philosophic modesty and candour of the 

 author. His acute and well-stored mind bad been directed to the 

 subject for more than twenty years, during which time he accumu- 

 lated a vast mass of facts, and had carried on numerous ingenious 

 experiments. These he has exhibited in detail before his readers, 

 and has calmly stated the conclusions to which they have appeared 

 to him to lead; and so far from stating those conclusions in any 

 spirit approaching to dogmatism, he has seen and even imagined the 

 objections which, as he himself says, might be justly urged against 

 his theory ; and in his replies he shows no desire for victory, unless 

 won by the arms of sound reasoning. It has been observed by a 

 critic of no ordinary power, by one eminently qualified to sit in 

 judgment on such a work, that " all competent naturalists and 

 physiologists, whatever their opinions as to the ultimate fate of the 

 doctrines put forth, acknowledge that the work in which they are 

 embodied is a solid contribution to knowledge, and inaugurates a 

 new epoch in Natural History." The writer adds, " our object has 

 been, in this criticism, to give an intelligible account of the esta- 

 blished facts connected with species, and of the relation of the expla- 

 nation of these facts offered by Mr. Darwin to the theoretical views 

 held by his predecessors and his contemporaries, and, above all, to 

 the requirements of scientific logic. We have ventured to point out 

 that it does not as yet satisfy all these requirements ; but we do not 

 hesitate to assert that it is as superior to any preceding or contem- 

 porary hypothesis in the extent of observation and experimental 

 basis on which it rests, in its rigorously scientific method, and in 

 its power of explaining biological phenomena, as was the hypothesis 

 of Copernicus to the speculations of Ptolemy. We should leave a 

 very wrong impression on the reader's mind if we permitted him to 

 suppose that the value of this work depends wholly on the justifica- 

 tion of the theoretical views which it contains. On the contrary, 

 if they were disproved tomorrow, the book would still be the best 

 of its kind, the most compendious statement of well-sifted facts 

 bearing on the doctrine of species that has ever appeared." If 

 common report and intrinsic evidence are to be relied upon, the 

 author of the above criticism is no less a person than our distin- 

 guished Secretary, Professor Huxley. 



There are two chapters, however, in the work, upon which I 

 venture to offer this opinion, that it becomes almost a duty of the 

 President of this Society, on an occasion like the present, to recom- 



