219 
the other ; blit, given which — I suppose he would have said he imagined 
they came by creative acts — the rest could have been developed by the 
process of ordinary evolution. I suppose Dr. Eae has understood that I 
used the language I employed in a geographical sense ? 
Dr. Eae. — I am afraid I did not hear you distinctly. 
Professor Stokes. — Another speaker has referred to the obvious distinction 
between natural selection and evolution. You may say that evolution is a 
genus of which natural selection is a species. The denial of natural selection, 
if you do deny it, is not, as a matter of course, a denial of evolution. 
Evolution is a much wider thing. One of the speakers has asked me — and 
I do not know whether I quite followed him in his reasoning — how far, say 
in the case of the pitcher-plant, the supposition that the pitcher is obtained 
by natural selection involves the idea of mind existing in the plant, or how 
far, so to speak, it involves the action of mind outside the plant. But no 
one says that it does involve mind in the plant. The process, according to 
Darwin’s theory, involves a certain hypothesis to start with, and then 
deduces, deductively, the existence of those organs which are favourable to 
the development of the plant or animal. It involves the process of what 
may be called slight casual variations between the plant, as it springs from 
the seed, and the parent plant ; and, in the case of animals, similar varia- 
tions between the animal as it becomes developed and the parent animal. 
It also involves the hypothesis that certain peculiarities have a tendency to 
be transmitted by hereditary descent, both in plant and animal ; and, like- 
wise, the supposition that great multitudes must have perished while this 
process has been going on, but that gradually there was a tendency towards 
the preservation of those plants and creatures that were best suited to their 
surroundings. As to the probabilities in favour of or against this process, 
that is a matter on which I do not dare to speak. I am not a biologist, and 
I would rather leave that point to those who have made that branch of 
science their particular study. In conclusion, I have only to say that it 
gives me the greatest pleasure to join in the opinion expressed by our 
Chairman, as to the exceeding truth-loving character of that great 
naturalist, the late Dr. Darwin. I had the pleasure of a slight acquaint- 
ance with him, and knew him to be a man to whom everybody looked up 
with reverence and respect. 
The meeting was then adjourned. 
EEMAEKS BY PEINCIPAL J. W. DAWSON, C.M.G., F.E.S., 
CHANCELLOE OF McGILL COLLEGE, MONTEEAL. 
I beg to thank you for the proof copy of Professor Stokes’s paper on 
“The Absence of real Opposition between Science and Eevelation.” In 
this I thoroughly agree with the author of the paper. The so-called “ conflict” 
