FBOM BUFFON TO DABWIN. 315 



variance within itself, from the differing influences of pride, 

 prejudice, and incapacity." The genius of Cuvier was able to 

 inspire this " miscellaneous being" with an interest in the science 

 of comparative anatomy. Few minds could fail to be struck and 

 powerfully impressed by the wonderful principle of correlation, 

 which enables the skilful anatomist from a small portion of an 

 organism ideally to reconstruct the whole fabric ; from a fossil 

 tooth, to explain the shape, the food, the habits of an animal 

 that had never been seen by the eye of any mortal man. Round 

 Cuvier gathered a great band of scientific workers, and in his 

 own special subject he remains the monumental standard of com- 

 parison by which other men's abilities are estimated. 



A colloquial but expressive phiase describes a dull boy by 

 saying that "he will never set the Thames on fire." In the 

 estimate of his friends apparently Charles Darwin was a dull boy. 

 He ended by setting not only the Thames on fire, but the whole 

 world ablaze, with the light and heat that his speculations kindled. 

 What Linnaeus had been to the latter half of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, that was Darwin to the latter half of the nineteenth. The 

 artificial classification of Linnaeus is discarded by botanists. Every 

 specialist can in his own subject point out errors committed by 

 Linnaeus. And yet the glory of the man remains untarnished. 

 Natural History of the modern era began with him. He is the 

 founder of it. In like manner the fame of Darwin will not suffer 

 diminution, if some of those whom he has sent wandering through 

 the thousand avenues of research find something to correct in his 

 arguments or to modify in his theories. Biology of the modern 

 era began with him. He is the founder of it. 



Whether any of these illustrious men personally deserved 

 credit is a pleasing subject ever open to debate. Original ideas 

 always run two risks, first of being condemned as mischievous 

 novelties, and then of being stigmatized as shameless plagiarisms. 

 The ancients have constantly been convicted of stealing our best 

 jokes, and they have evidently tried to rub the gloss off some of 

 our finest scientific discoveries by rather too plainly speaking of 

 them before they were made. Therefore, while extolling the 

 men who seem to have been most signally effective in raising 

 natural science out of obscurity into prominence, we may readily 

 own that minds and ideas, like species, are no result of abrupt 



