452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE WORLD OF LIFE AS VISUALIZED AND INTERPRETED 



BY DARWINISM 1 



By ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, Esq., O.M., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S. 



THE lecturer began by stating, that, although the theory of Darwin- 

 ism is one of the most simple of comprehension in the whole 

 range of science, there is none that is so widely and persistently mis- 

 understood. This is the more remarkable, on account of its being 

 founded upon common and universally admitted facts of nature, more 

 or less familiar. to all who take any interest in living things; and this 

 misunderstanding is not confined to the ignorant or unscientific, but 

 prevails among the educated classes, and is even found among eminent 

 students and professors of various departments of biology. 



Darwinism is almost entirely based upon these external facts of na- 

 ture, the close observation and description of which constituted the 

 old-fashioned " naturalists," and it is the specialization in modern 

 science that has led to the misunderstanding referred to. Those who 

 have devoted years to the almost exclusive study of anatomy, physi- 

 ology or embryology, and that equally large class, who make the lower 

 forms of life (mostly aquatic) the subject of microscopical investiga- 

 tion, are naturally disposed to think that a theory which can dispense 

 with all their work (though often strikingly supported by it), can not 

 be so important and far-reaching as it is found to be. 



Numbers, Variety and Intermingling of Life-forms 



Coming to the first great group of facts upon which Darwinism 

 rests, the lecturer calls attention to the great number of distinct 

 species both of vegetable and animal life found even in our own very 

 limited and rather impoverished islands, as compared with the more ex- 

 tensive areas. Great Britain possessed somewhat less than 2,000 

 species of flowering plants while many equal areas on the continent 

 of Europe have twice the number. The whole of Europe contains 

 9,000 species, and the world 136,000 species already described; but 

 the total number, if the whole earth were as well known as Europe, 

 would be almost certainly more than double that number or about a 

 quarter of a million species. The following table -showing how much 

 more crowded are the species in small than in large areas, was exhib- 

 ited on the wall. It affords an excellent illustration of the fact of the 

 great intermingling of species, so that large numbers are able to live 

 in close contact with other, usually very distinct, species. 



1 Abstract of a lecture before the Koyal Institution of Great Britain. 



