206 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
as we do now. Aineas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., has 
left an account of his journey through the British Islands, about 
1430. He describes the houses of the peasants as made of stone 
without mortar; the roofs were of turf; a stiffened bull’s hide 
served for a door. The food consisted of coarse vegetables, such 
as peas, and even the bark of trees. In some places they were 
unacquainted with bread. Contrast this with the progress made 
up to Queen Anne’s time, when again we have a reliable his- 
torian. It had been so little, that the Queen, in 1704, in going 
to Portsmouth from London, now a journey of a few hours, had 
the royal carriage twice upset in the mud, and saw bands of 
robbers, wild boars, and red deer, The roads were mere tracks 
full of mud, even in the summer. Shade of Macadam ! 3 
Hence in modern times our differences in the breed of horses, 
Whilst all heavy goods were carried by the pack-horse, the breed 
maintained its broad, strong back, and short sturdy fore legs; but 
when roads became better, and pace was needed, longer legs and 
slighter bodies became necessary ; hence the present condition of 
horses was determined by the road—a first-class modern instance 
of the survival of the fittest. 
But all other methods or systems of Scientific thought pale 
before that great discovery of the nineteenth century — the 
Darwinian Theory. Laughed at, sneered at, snubbed, it has slowly 
made its way. Slightly altered, it is now the accepted doctrine 
of its first most bitter opponents. It preaches emphatically Law. 
That Nature has been arranged by Law. That the Law being 
made, the outcome was certain; and that there never has been, 
is, or can be, any deviation from Nature’s Law. 
But in these latter days, if Darwin worked at the vast and 
propounded the enormous theory of Evolution, there is another 
man still alive who worked at the infinitesimal, and has done 
more solid good to the human race and its congeners than almost 
any other. I speak of Louis Pasteur. First discovering the 
dysymmetry of the crystals of paratartrate of potash, he worked 
out the laws of symmetry in the inorganic world. Passing to the 
organic he laid down the laws of ferments. He found out and 
classified the diseases of wines and beers—a small thing, one 
may say, but the foundation of a theory that is in the future to 
regenerate the whole of the curatives of disease. He next 
