164 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



As for the reception of the book abroad, the 

 French savants were somewhat coy, but the Germans, 

 with Haeckel at their head, were enthusiastic. Dar- 

 win had, Hke all prophets, more honour in other 

 countries than in his own. Evolution being rechris- 

 tened Darwinismus. Translation after translation 

 of the Origin followed apace, and the personal in- 

 terest that gathered round the central idea led to 

 the perusal of the book by people who had never 

 before opened a scientific treatise. Punch seized on 

 it as subject of caricature; and writers of light verse 

 found welcome material for " chafif " which the winds 

 of oblivion have blown away, a stanza here and there 

 surviving, as in Mr. Courthope's Aristophanic lines: 



Eggs were laid as before, but each time more and more varieties 



struggled and bred, 

 Till one end of the scale dropped its ancestor's tail, and the other 



got rid of his head. 

 From the bill, in brief words, were developed the Birds, unless our 



tame pigeons and ducks lie ; 

 From the tail and hind legs, in the second-laid eggs, the apes, — 



and Professor Huxley ! 



Heeding neither squib, satire, nor sermon, Dar- 

 win, in the quiet of his Kentish home, went on re- 

 arranging old materials, collecting new materials, 

 and verifying both, the outcome of this being his 

 works on the Fertilization of Orchids and the Varia- 

 tion of Plants and Animals under Domestication, 

 pubhshed in 1862 and 1867 respectively. Between 

 these dates Huxley's Man's Place in Nature — logical 



