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Show 238 DAR WINI.AN .A. cally baseless ; a recent instance of the. sort we may h to consider further on. Others, hke the youth ~e . . fi at the river's bank, have been waitmg In con dent expectation of seeing the curren_t run itself dry. _On the other hand, a notable proportiOn of the more activeminded naturaHsts had already come to doubt thereceived doctrine of the entire fixity of species, and still more that of their independent and supernatural origination. W.hile their systematic work all proceeded implicitly upon .the hypothe~is of the independen.ce and entire permanence of speCies, they were perceiving more or less clearly that the whole question was inevitably to be mooted again, ~nd s_o wer_e prepared to give the alternative hypothesis a dispassiOnate consideration. The veteran Lyell set an early example, and on a reconsideration of the whole question, wrote ane~ his famous chapter and reversed his former and weighty opinion. Owen, sti~l e~rlie~, signified his adhesion to the doctrine of dertvatwn m some form, but apparently upon general, speculative grounds; for he repudiated natural selection, and offered no. other natural solution of the mystery of the orderly mcoming of cognate forms. As examples o~ t~e effect of Darwin's " Origin of Species" upon the mmds of nat- -uralists who are no longer young, and whose prepossessions, even more than Lyell's, were likely to ?ias them against the new doctrine, two from the bota~ICal side are brought to our notice through re~ent miscellaneous writings which are now before us. 1 Since this article was in typ~, noteworthy examples of appreciative scientific judgment of the derivative hypothesis have com~ ~0 hand: _1. In the opening address to the Geological Section of the BrJtJsh AssoCJa· ATTITUDE OF WORKING NATURALISTS. 239 Before the publication of Darwin's first volume M. ~lpho~se ~e C~ndolle had summed up the resul~ of h:s st~~Ie~ m this. regard, i_n the final chapter of his classical Geograph1e Botamque Raisonnee" in the conclusion, t~at e~isting vegetation must be 'regarded as the c?ntmuatwn, through many geological and geographical changes, of the anterior vegetations of the world; and that, consequently, the present distribution. of sp:cies is explicable only in the light of their geological history. I-Ie surmised that, notwithstanding ~he g~nera~ stability of forms, certain species or quas.I-speCies might have originated through diversificatiOn under geographical isolation. But, on the other hand, he was still disposed to admit that even the same species might have originated independently in two or more different regions of the world· and he declined, as unpractical and unavailing, all ~ttempts to apply hypotheses to the elucidation of the oriO'in of species. Soon after Darwin's book appeared, De Oando!le had occasion to study systematically a large ~nd ;vide-spread genus-that of the oak. Investigatmg It under the new light of natural selection~ he came to the conclusion that the existing oaks are all descendants of earlier forms, and that no clear line can be drawn between the diversification which has tion, at its recent meeting, by its president, the veteran Phillips, perhaps the oldest surviving geologist after Lyell; and, 2. That of Prof. Allm~ n, Presid.ent of the Biological Section. The first touches the subject b~1e~y, but m the way of favorable suggestion; the second is a full and discriiDinating expQsition of the reasons which seem to assure at least the provisional acceptance of the hypothesis as a guide in all biological 8 t ud t' es, " a key to the order and hidden forc'e s of the world of life." |