CHAPTER XXVI 
PUBLICATION OF THE * ORIGIN ' AND THE * INTRODUCTION 
TO THE TASMANIAN FLORA ' 
Darwin was well content that his ideas, given to the world 
in November 1859, had already won the support of Lyell and 
Hooker, the first geologist and the first botanist of the age. 
The publication, nearly a month earher, of the Introductory 
Essay to the Flora of Tasmania, though of com'se unable to 
refer to the store of material and argument in the printed 
page of the ' Origin,' was scientifically the strongest possible 
buttress of Darwin. It took the crucial case of the Australian 
Flora which presented so many exceptions to the rule of 
Distribution elsewhere. In a country of relatively uniform 
physical features, the botanist expects to find a large number 
of individuals of comparatively few kinds. Here the case 
was reversed. The number of genera and species was very 
great. More than that, the crowded forms of the S.W. were 
singularly different from those of the S.E. Though so near, 
they had not intermingled, while in Tasmania, joined to the 
S.E. region at no very remote geological date, appeared a 
larger proportion of extra-Australian plants, notably those 
of Antarctic and European types. 
Beginning with a reference to his large materials, and the 
fact that in the five years of his work he had personally 
examined 7000 out of the 8000 species discussed, he avowed 
his revision of the views expressed in the New Zealand Flora, 
set forth not as his ovm. views, but as the current working 
hypothesis, namely the immutability of species as created. 
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