THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 67 
his investigations, observes closely, and accepts as true 
only those things which have been amply verified. But 
his knowledge is not organised, nor his facts related to the 
whole body of knowledge. The experiences of the next 
fifty years are to produce another outlook far beyond his 
own. It is difficult to imagine what he might-have done 
had he found his investigations clash with his religious 
beliefs. His field of work was too restricted to enable 
him to organise his facts and his investigations. With him 
passes away the old-style Naturalist, to be succeeded by 
the writers of monographs, and the great Naturalists of 
the Victorian era. 
But the final act, it appears to me, in the great struggle 
through all history, ‘the final scene in the age-long effort 
to free the mind so that it might no- longer be bound to 
explain the material by the supernatural, is consciously 
geological discovery had unsettled many minds. No one 
of whom I know has given us a better idea of the revo- 
lution of thought, and of the great mental crisis produced 
~ than Edmund Gosse, in that remarkable human document, 
“Father and Son.’’ Lyell, the geologist, was a great or- 
it necessary to organise a band of Naturalists who were 
amidst the howl of execration, which, he felt assured, 
them were Wallace, Hooker, and Darwin. It was a little 
band of fearless men who, meeting truth, had acknowledged 
it. It was difficult for the very great majority to accept 
ideas which upset their preconceived ideas of creation, 
and the theological teaching of many generations, involv- 
and a gifted writer, adding to his profound knowledge of 
Nature a literary style and powers of expression which de- 
lighted a vast audience of leaders. I, for one, in my boyhood 
and again, fascinated by their charm. Gosse, the elder, 
was approached to join with the great leaders, but. his 
son says ‘‘he allowed the turbid volume of superstition to 
It is a localised life he leads; he follows quite fearlessly — 
entered upon in the year 1857. Already the progress of — 
by the publication of the theory of the mutability of species, 
ganiser, and a man of strong personality. He considered 
in agreement in regard to the new theories, to stand united 
would follow the giving of these to the world. Amongst 
days, loved his stories of Nature, and read them again 
ing the denial “of the fundamental theories and beliefs of 
their lives. Edmund Gosse’s father was a sreat Naturalist 
Es 
ete 
