478 ON SPECIES 
Witness the self-confident style of Whewell ^ and Baden 
Powell,^ Sedgwick ^ and Biickland. Berkeley has avoided 
this latter snare but has got thoroughly imbued with the 
idea that it matters little how his matter is served up. The 
book, however, pjeases me amazingly ; there is a lofty tone 
throughout it, an aiming at the highest principles and an 
earnest desire to make his readers think for themselves as 
much as he does for them. 
Bentham's resume of our views will appear in the Journal 
Linnean. The Germans have got to dreaming on the subject 
as usual, and A. Braun is groping amongst the blacks for 
the characters of the whites. There is a story somewhere 
of an Enghshman, Frenchman, and German being each 
called on to describe a camel. The Englishman immediately 
embarked for Egypt, the Frenchman went to the Jardin 
des Plantes, and the German shut himself up in his study 
and thought it out ! How can Braun, who has no practical 
knov^ledge of large masses of species, know where the generic 
idea and name is to be fixed, how far, in short, systematic 
language is to be carried into the subdivisions of plants ? 
Seemann has got some twaddle about whether genera are 
objective or subjective, a point easily disposed of, Bosa 
1 William Whewell (1794-1866) was the famous Master of Trinity, Cam- 
bridge, from 1841, of whom Sydney Smith said that science was his forte and 
Omniscience his foible. He had held the chairs of ]\Iineralogy and Moral 
Philosophy, and his memoirs of the Tides had won a gold medal from the Royal 
Society in 1837. His universality of learning was shown in his History of the 
Inductive Sciences (1837), and his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), 
which, his friends recognised, produced a greater eifect on study than any 
specialisation of his. His other celebrated work, Of the Plurality of Worlds, 
appeared in 1853. 
2 Baden Powell (1796-1860) was Savilir n Professor of Geometry at Oxford 
from 1827. He wrote especially on radiant heat, optics, and the general history 
and study of science. A liberal churchman, he took his part in theological 
controversy, and was a contributor to Essays and Reviews. Among his best 
known books were those on the Unity of Worlds, Natural Theology, and the 
Order of Naturs. 
2 Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) was one of those men whose influence was 
due as much to his warm affections as to his powers of preaching, teaching, 
and research. As Woodwardian Professor of Geology from 1818, he reorganised 
geological teaching at Cambridge ; was President of the Geological Society 
1831, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1851 and the Copley in 1863, and 
refusing other preferment, became Canon of Norwich. His research into 
British geology resulted in the establishment of the Cambrian system ; but 
though a pioneer in his own department, he was unreceptive of new and pro- 
gressive ideas, such as Lyell's uniformitarianism, and vehemently opposed 
Darwin. 
