Page:Evolution of Life (Henry Cadwalader Chapman, 1873).djvu/19

Rh form the evidences in favor of the Evolution of Life, and its offering Natural Selection as a cause of this Evolution. We will not dwell now on Natural Selection, as we endeavor to explain it in a chapter devoted to that subject. It seems proper, however, to mention that the discovery of Natural Selection was made independently by Mr. Wallace, who, having spent seven years in the Malay Archipelago, sent a paper to London containing his views on the Origin of Species. Following the advice of mutual friends, Mr. Darwin brought forward an abstract of his views, and the two papers appeared simultaneously in the publications of the Linnaean Society. Since the publication of the Origin of Species, many works have appeared in which this subject is discussed more or less in detail, among which may be mentioned the later ones of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace; the General Morphology and Natural History of Creation, by Prof. Haeckel; the Principles of Biology, by Mr. Herbert Spencer; the various works of Dr. Büchner; the Origin of Species, etc., by Prof. Huxley; the Introduction to the Flora of Tasmania, by Sir William Hooker; the Comparative Anatomy of Prof. Gegenbauer; the Crustacea of Fritz Müller; the different papers by Prof. Cope, etc. etc.

Hoping now to have made clear the general object of our essay, to have shown how gradual has been the development of the theory of the Evolution of Life, and having merely noticed some of the important literature on the subject, we pass on to the consideration of the Evidences, the Causes, and the Consequences of this Evolution.