APPENDIX 



Extract from a Letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, 

 dated June 23, 1910. 



' As to Herbert Spencer, his style in his systematic work 

 is such as to repel many readers. His terminology was 

 often obscure and his reasoning often tremendously 

 elaborate. But when attacking any special problem of 

 biology or physics he was wonderfully luminous. I remem- 

 ber being greatly impressed by his Linnean paper, ' On 

 Circulation and the Formation of Wood in Plants ' 

 {Trans. Linn. Soc, Vol. XXV. Read March i, 1886. 

 AppendixC, Principles of Biology, Vol. II). It shows what 

 a lot of experiments he made, how constantly he appealed 

 to the experimental method and how admirably he 

 reasoned on it. This paper, written in 1865, before 

 Darwin had begun his work on the movements of plants, 

 shows, I think, that if Spencer had been less of a tiiinker 

 and more of a specializer he could have rivalled Darwin 

 as an investigator. I have always been interested in sap 

 motion — a problem not yet settled, and yet Spencer, more 

 than forty years ago, seems to have tiirown moire light 

 on it than any one else. On the whole, Spencer, I think, 

 still ranks as the greatest all-round thinker and most 

 illuminating reasoner of the Nineteenth Century.' 



Extract from a Letter from Sk Joseph D, Hooker, 

 dated October 14, 1910. 



' I have great pleasure in assuring you of the high 

 esteem in which I held my dear late friend Herbert 

 Spencer's scientific position. Of his ability to support 

 his views by arguments derived from the vegetable lang- 

 dom there can be no question, but this is a very small 

 matter in contrast to the skill with which he seized upon 

 facts and suggestions and the patient labour with which 

 he sought to test them by experiments, often devised 

 and carried out by himself unaided. It was my privilege 

 to be kept fully cognizant of these operations of lus mind, 

 his eyes and his hands, to supply him now and then with 

 materials from Kew, and always with encouragement — 

 but beyond these he owed me nothing.' 



Oxford : Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart, M.A. 



