276 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
the celebration, and the venerable Sir Joseph Hooker, one of the 
two friends to whom Darwin first confided his epoch-making con- 
clusions. 
The President, in welcoming the delegates and guests, said that 
they were met to celebrate what was without doubt the greatest event 
in the history of the Linnean Society since its foundation. Nor was 
it easy to conceive the possibility in the future of any second reyolu- 
tion of biological thought so momentous as that which was started 
fifty years ago by the reading of the joint papers of Mr. Darwin and 
Dr. Wallace, communicated to the Society by Sir Charles Lyell and 
Sir Joseph Hooker. In Darwin’s contributions the now classic term 
“natural selection’ was used for the first time. In Dr. Wallace’s 
paper the same idea was expressed with equal clearness. With both 
authors the key to evolution was at the same time the key to adapta- 
tion, and the great characteristic by which living things were dis- 
tinguished. Darwin and Wallace not only freed us from the dogma 
of special creation—a dogma which we now found it difficult to con- 
ceive of as once seriously held—but they afforded a natural explana- 
tion of the marvellous indications of design which had been the 
great strength of the old doctrine; and themselves, with their 
disciples, added tenfold to the evidence of adaptation. Any new 
development of the doctrine of evolution must be prepared to face 
fairly and squarely the facts of adaptation. He was proud to welcome, 
on behalf of the Linnean Society, the illustrious gathering which had 
assembled to commemorate an event so unpretentious in its circum- 
stances, so profound in its significance. The presence of Dr. Wallace, 
one of the two creators of the theory, and of Sir Joseph Hooker, who 
brought it into the world, was in itself enough to render the meeting 
memorable. While regretting the absence of Prof. Weismann and 
Prof. Haeckel, those valiant champions of evolution, he rejoiced to 
welcome Prof. Strasburger, who represented in the present day the 
great school of Hofmeister, who helped to make straight the way for 
‘The Origin of Species.’ 
The ceremony of presenting the special Darwin-Wallace medals 
was then entered upon. 
In making the presentation first to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the 
President said that Dr. Wallace’s brilliant work both in natural 
history and geography had often received distinguished recognition. 
In asking him to accept the first Darwin- Wallace medal, the Linnean 
Society was really offering him his own. There was nothing in the 
history of science more delightful or more noble than the story of the 
relations between Darwin and Wallace—the story of a generous 
rivalry in which each discoverer strove to exalt the claims of the 
other. It was a remarkable and momentous coincidence that both 
should have independently arrived at the idea of natural selection 
after the reading of Malthus’s book, and it was a most happy inspira- 
tion that Dr. Wallace should have selected Darwin as the naturalist 
to whom his discovery should be communicated. Like Darwin, Dr. 
Wallace was, above all, a naturalist, a student, and lover of living 
animals and plants. It was to such men—those who had learnt the 
