1877.] Evolution in the Netherlands. 295 
It is the slow, the certain, the beautiful, and the unchanging 
process of cosmical law, which gives the character of infinite to 
the universe. Finite man has not as yet read the pages of the 
law, and cannot therefore calculate the age of this earth. He 
has tried over and over again to do so, but Professor Tait is not so 
near to the truth as Solomon was; other “ guesses” (Quarterly) 
may be nearer, but the men who guess are at present without 
chart, compass, or sounding-line on the fathomless and boundless 
ocean of eternity. — The Geographical Magazine. 
EVOLUTION IN THE NETHERLANDS: TESTIMONIAL 
TO MR. DARWIN. 
W E have great pleasure in printing the following correspond- 
ence : — 
UTRECHT, February 20, 1877. 
To THE EDITOR or NATURE, — On the sixty-ninth birthday 
of your great countryman, Mr. Charles Darwin, an album with 
two hundred and seventeen photographs of his admirers in the 
Netherlands, among whom are eighty-one doctors and twenty- 
one university professors, was presented to him. ‘To the album 
was joined a letter, of which you will find a copy here inclosed, 
with the answer of Mr. Darwin. 
I suppose you will like to give to both letters a place in your 
very estimable journal, and therefore I have the honor to for- 
ward them to you. P. HARTING, 
- Professor, University, Utrecht. 
ROTTERDAM, February 6, 1877. 
_ SiR, — In the early part of the present century there resided 
in Amsterdam a physician, Dr. J. E. Doornik, who, in 1816, 
took his departure for Java, and passed the remainder of his life 
for the greater part in India. His name, though little known 
elsewhere than in the Netherlands, yet well deserves to be held 
in remembrance, since he occupies an honorable place among the 
Pioneers of the theory of development. Among his numerous 
publications on natural philosophy, with a view to this, are 
worthy of mention his “ Wijsgeerig-natuurkundig onderzoek aan 
gaande den vorspronkelijken mensch en de vorspronkelijke stam- 
men van deszelfs geslacht” (Philosophie Researches concerning 
Original Man and the Origin of his Species), and his treatise, 
1 From Nature, London. 
