90 
The Queensland Naturalist. Vol. I. 
position than their opponents. But they can do much 
more than this ; they can show that the process of modifica- 
tion has effected and is effecting great changes in all 
organisms, subject to modiyfing influences 
They can show that any existing species — animal or vege- 
table — when placed under conditions different from its 
previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes 
of structure fitting it for the new conditions. They can 
show that in successive generations these changes continue 
until ultimately the new conditions become the natural 
ones. They can show that in cultivated plants and 
domesticated animals, and in the several races of men. these 
changes have uniformly taken place. They can show 
that the degrees of difference, so produced, are often, as in 
dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species 
are in other cases founded. They Can show that it is a 
matter for dispute whether some of these modified forms 
are varieties or modified species. They can show too that 
the changes daily taking place in ourselves ; the facility 
that attends long practice, and the loss of aptitude that 
begins when practice ceases ; the development of every 
faculty, bodily, moral or intellectual, according to the 
use made of it, are all explicable on this same principle. 
And thus they can show that throughout all organic nature 
there is at Avork a modifying influence of the kind they 
assign as the cause of these specific differences, an influence, 
\vhich, though slow in its action, does in time, if the circum- 
stances demand it, produce marked changes ; an influence 
which, to all appearance, would produce in the millions of 
years, and under the great varieties of condition AA^hich 
geological records imply, any amount of change.” 
Of the book itself, Allen says “ It was one of the 
greatest, the most learned, the most lucid, the most logical, 
the most crushing, the most conclusive, that the world 
has ever seen. Step by step, and principle by principle, 
it proved every point in its progress triumphantly, before 
it went on to demonstrate the next.” In six Aveeks the 
book had become famous, and though at first a European 
contest Avaged AAdth great bitterness as to the truth or 
falsity of Darwin’s wonderful volume ; yet, twenty-three 
years later, when all that was mortal of Charles DarAA'in 
was being laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, enlightened 
orthodoxy accepted his theoiy without reserve, as “ not 
necessarily hostile to the main fundamental truths of 
religion.” Hooker, Huxley, Bates, Spencer, Lubbock 
were among the first to give in their adhesion, and to stand 
boldly by DarAAdn’s side. Even his old Professor— Henslow, 
though now a parish priest, boldly avowed his acceptance 
of the theory of evolution, Lyell alone, among scientific 
minds of the first order, at first hung back, but some three 
