278 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
intellects fail while Darwin and he hit upon the solution? A curious 
series of correspondences both in mind and in environment led Dar- 
win and himself, alone among their contemporaries, to reach identi- 
cally the same theory. First and most important, in early life both 
Darwin and he became ardent beetle-hunters. There was no other 
group of organisms that so impressed the collector by the almost 
infinite number of its specific forms, and their innumerable adaptations. 
to diverse environments. Again, both Darwin and he had ‘ the mere 
passion of collecting,” an intense interest in the mere variety of living 
things. It was this superficial and almost childlike interest in the 
outward forms of living things which happened to be the only one 
that could have led them to a solution of the problem of species. It 
was the constant search for and detection of often unexpected differ- 
ences between very similar creatures that gave such an intellectual 
charm and fascination to mere collecting, and when, as with Darwin 
and himself, the collectors were of a speculative turn of mind, they 
were constantly led to think on the why and the how of this over- 
whelming, and at first sight purposeless, wealth of specific forms 
among the very humblest forms of life. Then a little later both 
Darwin and he became travellers and observers in some of the richest 
and most interesting portions of the earth, and thus had forced upon 
their attention all the strange phenomena of local and geographical 
distribution. Thenceforward the mystery of how species came into 
existence began, in Darwin’s phrase, ‘to haunt” them. Finally, 
both Darwin and he, at the critical moment when their minds were 
freshly stored with a considerable body of personal observation and 
reflection bearing on the problem to be solved, had their attention 
directed to the system of “ positive checks,” as expounded by Malthus 
in his ‘Principles of Population.’ The effect of this was analogous to 
that of friction on the specially prepared match, producing that flash 
of insight which led them immediately to the simple but universal 
law of the ‘“‘ survival of the fittest’ as the long-sought effective cause 
of the continuous modification and adaptation of living things. He 
attached much importance to the large amount of solitude which he 
and Darwin enjoyed during their travels, and which gave them ample 
time for reflection. This view of the combination of certain mental 
faculties and external conditions that led Darwin and himself to an 
identical conception also served to explain why none of their pre- 
cursors or contemporaries hit upon what was really so very simple a 
solution of the great problem. He accepted the crowning honour 
conferred upon him that day as a too liberal recognition of the 
moderate amount of time and work he had given to explain and 
elucidate the theory, to point out some novel applications of it, and 
extend those applications even in directions which somewhat diverged 
from those accepted by his honoured friend and teacher—Charles 
Darwin. 
The President, in presenting the medal next to Sir Joseph Hooker, 
said it was with profound pleasure that they welcomed one whom 
Darwin fifty years ago wrote of as “our best British botanist, and 
perhaps the best in the world,” words which had gained in force with 
