xii Obituary Notice of Fellow deceased. 



to anticipate cecology, the study of plants in their social relations, which is a 

 modern outcome of the Darwinian theory. He notes that he found some 

 forty species on a " tree-stump on the damp, exposed hill-tops of the 

 Khasia." He continues : " It is almost impossible, however, to appreciate 

 the nicely balanced local circumstances that determine the number of 

 species which will all find room and keep, and in a limited space" (p. 92). 

 It was on such cases that Darwin founded one of the strongest arguments, if 

 a somewhat subtle one, for his theory. " The truth of the principle that the 

 greatest amount of life can be supported by great diversification of structure 

 is seen under many natural circumstances (' Origin,' 6th Edition, p. 88). 



Besides permanent and transitory variation, he now recognises a third 

 class : " There are accidental variations due to no apparent causes or to very 

 fluctuating ones " (p. 30). This is probably the first use of the word fluctuating 

 in connection with the kind of variation to which it is now generally applied. 



There was a gradual approximation to Darwin's own point of view. 

 Huxley (L.L., vol. 2, p. 196) quotes a letter from Lyell to Sir Charles 

 Bunbury, written April 30, 1856: "When Huxley, Hooker, and Wollaston 

 were at Darwin's last week, they (all four of them) ran atilt against species 

 — further, I believe, than they are prepared to go." Huxley adds : " "With 

 regard to Hooker, he was already like Voltaire's Habbakuk, capable de tout in 

 the way of advocating evolution." But a belief in evolution as a fact, and a 

 conception of how it is effected, are by no means identical. He was still 

 some way from accepting Darwin's solution. 



It is probably unique in the history of science for the author of a 

 far-reaching theory, which ultimately meets with general acceptance, to keep 

 it for twenty years as a secret to himself and to a few intimate friends, and 

 meanwhile to occupy himself in testing its validity in every possible way r 

 and in building up argument in its support. Such reserve would in any 

 ordinary case be perilous if the claims of priority were of any importance. 

 But Darwin found that, as soon as the necessary consequences of the theory 

 were appreciated, the opposition it would encounter would be so violent that 

 no paius would be thrown away in making the evidence in its favour as far 

 as possible unassailable. 



Lyell had warned him that he would be forestalled. On June 18, 1858, 

 he received from Wallace, who was then in the Celebes Islands, an essay 

 containing what was substantially his own theory, and it came upon him, 

 as Wallace said, "like a thunderbolt from a clear sky." The position 

 became tragic, for, on June 29, Darwin was prostrate with illness ; scarlet 

 fever was raging in his family, and an infant son had died of it the day 

 before. Lyell and Hooker acted for him ; an extract from the MS., shown 

 to and read by Hooker in 1844, was communicated with Wallace's essay to 

 a meeting of the Linnean Society on July 1. This itself was an exceptional 

 occasion, for it was a special and postponed meeting in consequence of the 

 death of Bobert Brown. The new theory was launched over the grave of the 

 most distinguished botanist of his time. 



