Obituary Notices. 
XXV 
different geological phases, and are always found in those regions of 
the globe where similar conditions occur. 
Having thus interested himself in questions of geographical dis- 
tribution at large, it seems a natural step in specialisation of such 
study that de Candolle should have taken up the question of the 
“origin of cultivated plants.” The difficulties of this subject are 
not merely botanical, hut ethnological, historical, palaeontological, 
and even linguistic ; he arrived at his conclusions by a combination 
of all these lines of research. The result of this wide research, 
involving such varied and numerous facts, was a hook published in 
1882, which takes its place as the first authority on the subject. 
The attitude of de Candolle towards evolution was favourable 
from the first. Considering that he was already over fifty years of 
age when the Origin of Species appeared, it would have been con- 
ceivable that his opinions should have been too long held for 
change. But, on the other hand, his writings previous to it show 
that he was well prepared for some such view. He had already 
speculated upon the origin of those “physiological groups” men- 
tioned above, and had included in his reasoning observations and 
ideas relating to earlier geological periods. He had even recognised 
the possibility of new hereditary forms, which should have been 
derived from actual specific forms ; hut he felt the difficulty of 
such modifications being brought about without the hand of man, 
there being little probability that these modifications would he 
transmitted in the ordinary course of things ; still he admitted the 
possibility of species, under the influence of diverse circumstances, 
being modified, and developing accidentally under a new form. To 
one who was already in this position, “the origin of species, by 
means of natural selection,” would be accepted as a welcome solution 
of the difficulty. He wrote in 1862, “Darwin has placed his finger 
upon the essential point of the question, by seeking a cause by 
which the variations from one generation to another would be 
necessarily fixed instead of disappearing”; while in 1873 he wrote, 
“ One had believed in this evolution without understanding how it 
could operate; selection has come as an explanation how the 
changes, once produced, are fixed.” 
But it would be impossible here to review all the literary 
achievements of this most fertile writer ; for almost seventy years he 
