PROGRESSIVE EVOLUTION AND THE ORIGIN 

 OF SPECIES 1 



PROFESSOR ARTHUR DENDY 

 The opening years of the present century have wit- 

 nessed a remarkable development of biology as an ex- 

 perimental science, a development which, however full 

 of promise it may be for the future, for the time being 

 appears to have resulted in a widespread disturbance 

 of ideas which have themselves only recently succeeded 

 in gaining general acceptance. The theory of organic 

 evolution, plainly enough enunciated at the close of the 

 eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 by Buffon, Lamarck, and Erasmus Darwin, remained un- 

 convincing to the great majority of thinking men until 

 the genius of Charles Darwin not only brought together 

 and presented the evidence in such a manner that it could 

 no longer be ignored, but elaborated a logical explana- 

 tion of the way in which organic evolution might be sup- 

 posed to have taken place. Thanks to his labors and 

 those of Alfred Russel Wallace, supported by the power- 

 ful influence of such men as Huxley and Hooker, the 

 theory was placed upon a firm foundation, in a position 

 which can never again be assailed with any prospect of 

 success. 



This statement is, I believe, entirely justified with re- 

 gard to the theory of organic evolution itself, but the 

 case is very different when we come to investigate the 

 position of the various subsidiary theories which have 

 been put forward from time to time with regard to what 

 may perhaps be termed the modus operandi, the moans 

 by which organic evolution has been effected. It is in 

 this field that controversy rages more keenly than ever 

 before. Lamarck told us that evolution was due to the 



» Address of the president of the section of zoology, British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, Australia, 1914. 



149 



