BY THOMAS R. R. STEBBING, M.A. Late Fellow and Tutor of Worcester College, Oxford. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1871. [ All rights reserved ] OXFORD: BY T. COMBE, M.A., E. B. GARDNER, AND E. PICKARD HALL, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY....

The opinions of Mr. Darwin have now been for many years before the world. His own book on ‘The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection,’ unfolds and supports them with admirable clearness of argument. Far from being an abstruse and tedious work, it carries the reader on with unflagging interest to the close. Observations and experiments, some the most simple, some the most elaborate, notes on natural history, as well from every quarter of the globe as from almost every province of nature

It has been kindly pointed out to me by Mr. James Parker of Oxford that there is an error in Mr. Darwin’s calculation reproduced in page 13 of this volume. Upon the data supplied, the increase in the number of elephants there mentioned would require 750 years instead of 500. The further increase calculated in the same page, would in like manner require seven or eight additional centuries instead of five. Mr. Parker also suggests that the expressions in page 34, ‘taken for granted,’ ‘taught for c

The object of this lecture is to explain, with as much simplicity as possible, the opinions of Darwin on the chain of secondary causes which has resulted in the wonderful structures known to us as living creatures, and including, in an almost infinite variety, lichen and moss, mite and mildew, grass and flower and branching tree; mollusk and reptile and fish; the swan, the petrel, the ostrich and the eagle; the cunning ape; the faithful hound; the elephant, sagacious and mindful of insults; the

Darwinism implies almost throughout that no universal Deluge has drowned our globe, either within the last ten thousand years, or even within a period indefinitely longer. Let us speak with due respect of the contrary belief. It seems to rest upon the testimony of a Volume the most precious in the world. It was taken for granted till a few years back as much in science as in religion. For a while, the arguments that began to be raised against it were met by counter-arguments so plausible, and th

An initial probability has been established by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace that the reason or mind of man, as well as his body, has attained its present complete excellence through gradual development. No one denies that, between a man’s birth and his prime of life, time is required for the intellectual powers to unfold; but it demands an effort which few have as yet made to see in this progression of the individual mind a compendious history of the indefinitely slow process by which the human mi

A poor slave, named Androcles, escaped from his master into a sandy desert. While there a lion came suddenly upon him, and by signs made him understand that it was in an agony of pain. This the slave was able to relieve by extracting a large thorn from its paw and by gentle treatment of the wound. From this time the lion shared its prey with the man, till Androcles, pining for human society, and facing even death to regain it, at length gave himself up to his master. It so happened that the slav

The divergence of opinion between scientific and unscientific persons is scarcely anywhere more conspicuous than in their measurements of the age of the world we live in. A popular impression still prevails that the old beldame earth, as Hotspur calls it, is about six thousand years of age. A little margin is sometimes allowed. By an exercise of heroic liberality a period of ten or twelve thousand years is occasionally conceded for the earth’s existence. Any chronology discontented with these am

Presuming that there is not a particle of evidence as yet established in favour of the supposition known as the doctrine of abiogenesis , it does not follow that no such evidence ever will, or ever can, be forthcoming. The advancement of science is continually doing away with harsh, abrupt outlines, and revealing the softest shades of transition in the varied scenery of nature. Between organic and inorganic matter, between the inert and the living mass, the line of separation has been hitherto,

The general who is for ever counter-marching and skilfully executing retrograde movements cannot always sustain the enthusiasm of his own troops, much less excite in his favour that of the civilian multitude. To many minds, the reliance placed on the imperfection of the geological record appears to be a rather damaging retreat in the strategy of science. They were just beginning to believe in geology as a wonderful revelation of the past history of the globe, when suddenly they are told that the

Sir,—A friendly correspondent has done me the honour of noticing my lecture on the Noachian Flood in more than one contribution to your columns. The easy way in which he admits the possibility of a partial deluge and of pre-Adamite races, together with other symptoms of liberal thought and a trust in the conclusions of science, makes me tremble to think what would have befallen him had he lived ‘in happier ages of the Church.’ At the same time these dangerous and lamentable tendencies towards fr

Sir,—One of your correspondents has pithily observed, that if he has denounced Darwinism, it is simply because he believes it to be untrue. Could you not, Sir, in the interests of science and Christian charity, prevail upon him to recall his denunciation, by showing him that intellectual error requires not to be denounced, but to be set right? The prejudice against Darwinism has undoubtedly arisen from a conflict—real or apparent—between its conclusions and certain passages of Scripture. Such a

Sir,—Your amiable and earnest correspondent does not seem to understand that men like Darwin and Wallace, who have spent years of patient labour and thought in amassing observations of nature, and grouping together the facts out of which their theories have been formed, have a right to ‘an air of philosophical superiority,’ if they choose to display it, when questions are asked or arguments put forward which imply ignorance or misconception of all they have been doing in the interests of science

Sir,—Against your correspondent’s preference for vernacular terms may be set a remark by Dr. Whewell, that ‘the loose and infantine grasp of common language cannot hold objects steadily enough for scientific examination, or lift them from one stage of generalization to another. They must be secured by the rigid mechanism of a scientific phraseology.’ To say that ‘the first vertebrate must have been the product of innumerable antecedent factors,’ is, perhaps, an expression more puzzling than if o

The interesting notice in your last number, of M. Coquand’s ‘Oysters of the Chalk,’ draws inferences unfavourable to the theory of development or evolution which scarcely seem warranted by the facts. It need not be ‘difficult to imagine the creature as existing under such conditions, that one species, while engaged in “the struggle for existence,” should starve out and extinguish another;’ for however widely we may find a fossil species dispersed, it is not probable that it occupied the whole of

The soul of many an anti-Darwinian will have been cheered by Mr. A. W. Bennett’s paper on ‘The Theory of Natural Selection from a Mathematical Point of View.’ It is, in fact, a very admirable piece of special pleading, based on a skilful assumption of premisses which, to a careless or biassed observer, might seem indisputable. The tendency to variation is spoken of as something very mysterious, of which no adequate account has ever yet been given. Yet the very simple explanation is no bad one,—t

A review in ‘Nature,’ by Mr. A. W. Bennett, of Mr. Mivart’s ‘Genesis of Species,’ contains the following passage:— ‘It behoves, therefore, every Darwinian to satisfy himself that either Mr. Mivart’s premisses or his line of argument is unsound. ‘The objections brought forward by the author are summed up as follows:—(1) That Natural Selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures. (2) That it does not harmonize with the coexistence of closely similar structures o