ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 5 
In his famous book, which appeared in 1859, Mr. Darwin 
formally announced his view of natural history. He says: “I 
cannot doubt that the theory of descent, with modification, 
embraces all the members of the same class. I believe that 
animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, 
and plants from an equal or lesser number.” He seems to have 
looked forward even to a higher generalization, for he goes on to 
say that “analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the 
belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one 
prototype ; but this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and 
it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. The case is 
different with the members of each great class, as the Vertebrata, 
the Articulata, &e., for here we have distinct evidence that all 
have descended from a single parent.” Darwin concludes his 
treatise in these impressive words :—“ From the war of nature, 
from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are 
capable of conceiving—namely, the production of the higher 
animals,—directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of 
life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by 
the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this 
planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, 
from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most 
wonderful have been and are being evolved.” 
In his treatise on the “Origin of Species,” from which the 
foregoing quotations are copied, Darwin had not actually expressed 
-his views as to the ancestry of man, though he had left them to be 
very clearly inferred. He says: “It seemed to me sufficient to 
indicate that, by this work, light would be thrown on the origin 
of man and his history,” for this implied that man must be included 
with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting his 
manner of appearance on this earth, But in his work on the 
“Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,” which was 
published in 1871, Darwinexpressly dealt with this most interesting 
question. He presented man as co-descendant with the catarrhine 
or “ down-nostrilled ” monkeys from a hairy quadruped furnished 
