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Show iv PREFACE. to affect materially any important point. Accordingly, they are here reprinted unchanged, except by a f~w merely verbal alterati9ns made in proof-reading, and the striking out of one or two superfluous o.r immaterial passages. A very few additional notes or references are appended. To the last article but one a second part is now added, and the more elaborate Article XIII. is wholly new. If it be objected that some of these pages are written in a lightne~s of vein not quite congruous with the gravity of the subject and the seriousness of its issues, the excuse must be that they were written with perfect freedom, most of them as anonymous· contributions to popular journals, and -that an argument may not be the less sound or an exposition less effective for being playful. Some of the essays, however, dealing with points of speculative · scientific interest, may redress the balance, and be thought sufficiently heavy if not solid. To the objection likely to be made, that they cover only a part of the ground, it can only be replied that they do not pretend to be systematic or complete. They are all essays relating in some way or other td the subject which has been, during these years, of paramount interest to naturalists, and not much less so to most thinking people. The first appeared be- PREFACE. v tween sixteen and seventeen years- ago, immediately after the public~tion of Darwin's" Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," as a review of that volume, which, it was then foreseen, was to initiate a revolution in general scientific opinion. Long before our last article was written, it could be affirmed that the general doctline of the derivation of species (to put it comprehensively) has prevailed over that of specific creation, at least to the extent of being thereceived and presumably in some sense true conception. Far from undertaking any general discussion of evolution, several even of Mr. Darwin's writings have not been noticed, and topics which have been much discussed elsewhere are not here adverted to. This applies especially to what may he called deductive evolution-a subject which lay beyond · the writer's immediate scope, and to_ which neither the bent of -his mind nor the line of his studies has fitted him to do justice. If these papers are useful at all, it will be as showing how these new views of our day are regarded by a practical naturalist, versed in one department only (viz., Botany), most interested in their bealings upon its special problems, one accustomed to direct and close dealing with the facts in band, and disposed to rise from them only to the consideration of those general questions upon which th'ey throw or from which they receive illustration. |