DAVIS : PRO. PHILLIPS. 
17 
many of the, so-called, lower forins of life. Space will not permit 
that these instances should be more than alluded to at present. 
But they serve to illustrate one of the brightest characteristics of a 
mind trained to scientific methods, and pre-eminently such an one 
was that of John Phillips. A year or two after the publication of 
his friend Darwin's work, he had, after mature reflection opposed 
the whole theory; but in 1873, at the meeting of the British Asso- 
ciation at Bradford, the ever-increasing mass of evidence in favour 
of natural selection and development had produced their natural 
result, and we find the Professor in his presidential address to the 
geological section discoursing as follows* : — " But concurrently with 
the apparent perpetuity of similar forms and ways of life another 
general idea comes into notice. No two plants are more than alike; 
no two men have more than a family resemblance ; the offspring is 
not in all respects an exact copy of the parent. A general reference 
to some earlier type accompanied by special diversity in every case 
('descent with modification') is recognised in the case of every 
livinf; being. 
" Similitude, not identity, is the effect of natural agencies in 
the continuation of life forms, the small differences from identity 
being due to limited physical conditions, in harmony with the 
general law that organic structures are adapted to the exigencies of 
being. Moreover, the structures are adaptable to new conditions ; 
if the conditions change, the structures change also, but not 
suddenly ; the plant or animal may survive in presence of slowly 
altered circumstances, but must perish under critical inversions. 
These adaptations, so necessary to the preservation of a r?.ce ; are 
they restricted within narrow limits 1 or is it possible that in the 
course of long-enduring time, step by step and grain by grain, one 
form of life can be changed, amd has been changed to another, and 
adapted to fulfil quite different functions ? Is it thus that innu- 
merable forms of plants and animals have been 'developed' in the 
course of ages upon ages from a few original types 1 
* Brit. Assoc. Report, 1873. Trans, of the Sections, pp. 73, 74. 
