Views and Definitions of Species—How Darwin's differs from that of Agassiz, and from the Common View—Variation, its Causes unknown.—Darwin's Genealogical Tree—Darwin and Agassiz agree in the Capital Facts—Embryology—Physical Connection of Species compatible with Intellectual Connection—How to prove Transmutation.—Known Extent of Variation—Cause of Likeness unknown—Artificial Selection.—Reversion—Interbreeding—Natural Selection.—Classification tentative.—What Darwin assumes.—Argument stated.—How

How Design in Nature can be shown—Design not inconsistent with Indirect Attainment...

Alphonse De Candolle's Study of the Oak Genus.—Variability of the Species.—Antiquity.—A Common Origin probable.—Dr. Falconer on the Common Origin of Elephants—Variation and Natural Selection distinguished.—Saporta on the Gradation between the Vegetable Forms of the Cretaceous and the Tertiary.—Hypothesis of Derivation more likely to be favored by Botanists than by Zoologists.—Views of Agassiz respecting the Origin, Dispersion, Variation, Characteristics, and Successive Creation of Species contra

Age and Size of Sequoia.—Isolation.—Decadence.—Related Genera.— Former Distribution.—Similarity between the Flora of Japan and that of the United States, especially on the Atlantic Side.—Former Glaciation as explaining the Present Dispersion of Species.—This confirmed by the Arctic Fossil Flora of the Tertiary Period.—Tertiary Flora derived from the Preceding Cretaceous.—Order and Adaptation in Organic Nature likened to a Flow.—Order implies an Ordainer...

General Tendency to Acceptance of the Derivative Hypothesis noted.—Lyell, Owen, Alphonse De Candolle, Bentham, Flower, Ailman.— Dr. Dawson's "Story of the Earth and Man" examined.—Difference between Scientific Men and General Speculators or Amateurs in the Use of Hypotheses...

Writings of Henslow, Hodges, and Le Conte examined.—Evolution and Design compatible.—The Admission of a System of Nature, with Fixed Laws, concedes in Principle all that the Doctrine of Evolution requires.—Hypotheses, Probabilities, and Surmises, not to be decried by Theologians, who use them, perhaps, more freely and loosely than Naturalists.—Theologians risk too much in the Defense of Untenable Outposts...

Dr. Hodges Book with this Title criticised.—He declares that Darwinism is Atheism, yet its Founder a Theist.—Darwinism founded, however, upon Orthodox Conceptions, and opposed, not to Theism, but only to Intervention in Nature, while the Key-note of Dr. Hedge's System is Interference.—Views and Writings of St. Clair, Winchell, and Kingsley adverted to...

Darwin's Characteristics and Work as a Naturalist compared with those of Robert Brown.—His Illustration of the Principle that "Nature abhors Close Fertilization. "—His Impression upon Natural History exceeded only by Linnaeus.—His Service in restoring Teleology to Natural History...

Classification marks Distinctions where Nature exhibits Gradations.— Recovery of Forgotten Knowledge and History of what was known of Dionzea, Drosera, and Sarracenia....

Review of Darwin's Two Works upon these Subjects—No Absolute Marks for distinguishing between Vegetables and Animals.—New observations upon the Sundews or Droseras.—Their Sensitiveness, Movements, Discernment of the Presence and Appropriation of Animal Matter.—Dionaea, and other Plants of the same Order.—Utricularia and Pinguicula.—Sarracenia and Nepenthes.—Climbing Plants; the Climbing effected through Sensitiveness or Response to External Impression and Automatic Movement.—Capacities inherent

The Opposition between Morphology and Teleology reconciled by Darwinism, and the Latter reinstated—Character of the New Teleology.—Purpose and Design distinguished—Man has no Monopoly of the Latter.—Inference of Design from Adaptation and Utility legitimate; also in Hume's Opinion irresistible—The Principle of Design, taken with Specific Creation, totally insufficient and largely inapplicable; but, taken with the Doctrine of the Evolution of Species in Nature, applicable, pertinent, and, moreove

These papers are now collected at the request of friends and correspondents, who think that they may be useful; and two new essays are added. Most of the articles were written as occasion called for them within the past sixteen years, and contributed to various periodicals, with little thought of their forming a series, and none of ever bringing them together into a volume, although one of them (the third) was once reprinted in a pamphlet form. It is, therefore, inevitable that there should be c

(American Journal of Science and Arts, March, 1860) This book is already exciting much attention. Two American editions are announced, through which it will become familiar to many of our readers, before these pages are issued. An abstract of the argument—for "the whole volume is one long argument," as the author states—is unnecessary in such a case; and it would be difficult to give by detached extracts. For the volume itself is an abstract, a prodromus of a detailed work upon which the author

(Atlantic Monthly for July, August, and October, 1860, reprinted in 1861) Novelties are enticing to most people; to us they are simply annoying. We cling to a long-accepted theory, just as we cling to an old suit of clothes. A new theory, like a new pair of breeches (the Atlantic still affects the older type of nether garment), is sure to have hard-fitting places; or, even when no particular fault can be found with the article, it oppresses with a sense of general discomfort. New notions and new

(The Nation, October 16, 1873) That homely adage, "What is one man's meat is another man's poison," comes to mind when we consider with what different eyes different naturalists look upon the hypothesis of the derivative origin of actual specific forms, since Mr. Darwin gave it vogue and vigor and a raison d'être for the present day. This latter he did, not only by bringing forward a vera causa in the survival of the fittest under changing circumstances—about which the question among naturalists

(The Nation, January 15, 1874) The attitude of theologians toward doctrines of evolution, from the nebular hypothesis down to "Darwinism," is no less worthy of consideration, and hardly less diverse, than that of naturalists. But the topic, if pursued far, leads to questions too wide and deep for our handling here, except incidentally, in the brief notice which it falls in our way to take of the Rev. George Henslow's recent volume on "The Theory of Evolution of Living Things." This treatise is o

The Nation, May 28, 1874) The question which Dr. Hodge asks he promptly and decisively answers: "What is Darwinism? it is atheism." Leaving aside all subsidiary and incidental matters, let us consider—1. What the Darwinian doctrine is, and 2. How it is proved to be atheistic. Dr. Hodge's own statement of it cannot be very much bettered: "His [Darwin's] work on the 'Origin of Species' does not purport to be philosophical. In this aspect it is very different from the cognate works of Mr. Spencer.

(Nature, June 4, 1874, accompanying a portrait) Two British naturalists, Robert Brown and Charles Darwin, have, more than any others, impressed their influence upon science in this nineteenth century. Unlike as these men and their works were and are, we may most readily subserve the present purpose in what we are called upon to say of the latter by briefly comparing and contrasting the two. Robert Brown died sixteen years ago, full of years and scientific honors, and he seems to have finished, s

(The Nation, April 2 and 9, 1874) That animals should feed upon plants is natural and normal, and the reverse seems impossible. But the adage, "Natura non agit saltatim," has its application even here. It is the naturalist, rather than Nature, that draws hard and fast lines everywhere, and marks out abrupt boundaries where she shades off with gradations. However opposite the parts which animals and vegetables play in the economy of the world as the two opposed kingdoms of organic Nature, it is b

(The Nation, January 6 and 13, 1876) "Minerals grow; vegetables grow and live; animals grow, live, and feel;" this is the well-worn, not to say out-worn, diagnosis of the three kingdoms by Linnaeus. It must be said of it that the agreement indicated in the first couplet is unreal, and that the distinction declared in the second is evanescent. Crystals do not grow at all in the sense that plants and animals grow. On the other hand, if a response to external impressions by special movements is evi

I Do Varieties wear out, or tend to wear out? (New York Tribune, and American Journal of Science and the Arts, February, 1875) This question has been argued from time to time for more than half a century, and is far from being settled yet. Indeed, it is not to be settled either way so easily as is sometimes thought. The result of a prolonged and rather lively discussion of the topic about forty years ago in England, in which Lindley bore a leading part on the negative side, was, if we rightly re