1883.] his Biographers and his Traducer. 209 
it has been recognised that the present differs widely from 
the past ; that there has been a progress everywhere ; that 
Evolution, and not Uniformity, has been the law by which 
geological evidence has been governed.” If not the first to 
recognise the incompleteness of the geological record, he 
first convinced the world of its necessarily fragmentary cha- 
racter. He showed the fallacious nature of the assumption 
that the stages of the record “ were sharply marked off by 
the first appearance and final disappearance of certain spe- 
cies.” He first suggested that the geographical distribution 
of animals and plants throws a light on the changes of land 
and sea. How fruitful this hint has proved is universally 
known. 
As a botanist Darwin’s work is estimated by Mr. W. T. 
Dyer, F.R.S., Assistant-Director of the Kew Gardens. 
Here, too, the indiredt effect of the Dodtrine of Develop- 
ment must be pronounced more weighty than the diredt 
results of Darwin’s own contributions. But though he al- 
ways disclaimed the right to be regarded as a botanical spe- 
cialist, Mr. Dyer rightly says that each of his botanical 
investigations, taken on its own merits, would alone have 
made the reputation of any ordinary botanist. He detedted, 
analysed, and interpreted phenomena which the professed 
botanical world had for the most part overlooked. We need 
merely refer to his studies on circumnutation, on the fructi- 
fication of orchids, on hybridism, and on the distribution of 
plants. Particular attention is called here to the warm en- 
thusiasm, the passionate joy in Nature which he shared 
with Linnaeus and Humboldt, and which he complains is 
wanting in the narrower being of some of our more recent 
naturalists. 
Darwin’s greatness is, however, most fully shown in his 
work on Zoology. Mr. Romanes well says “ He was able 
to appreciate and successfully to cultivate every department 
of biological research,- — whether morphological, physiolo- 
gical, systematic, descriptive, or statistical, — and at the 
same time to rise above the minutice of these various branches 
to take those commanding views of the whole range of 
Nature and natural science which have produced so enor- 
mous a change in our means of knowledge and our modes 
of thought. No labourer in the field of Science has ever 
plodded more patiently through masses of small detail ; no 
master-mind on the highest elevation of philosophy has ever 
grasped more world-transforming truth.” 
Darwin’s elaborate monograph on the Cirripedia is referred 
to as proof that had he confined himself to morphology he 
