Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/690

670 The lode of discovery once struck, those petrified forms in which life was at one time active increased to multitudes and demanded classification. The general fact soon became evident that none but the simplest forms of life lie lowest down—that as we climb higher and higher among the superimposed strata more perfect forms appear. The change, however, from form to form was not continuous, but by steps, some small, some great. "A section," says Mr. Huxley, "a hundred feet thick will exhibit at different heights a dozen species of ammonite, none of which passes beyond its particular zone of limestone, or clay, into the zone below it, or into that above it." In the presence of such facts it was not possible to avoid the question, Have these forms, showing, though in broken stages and with many irregularities, this unmistakable general advance, been subjected to no continuous law of growth or variation? Had our education been purely scientific, or had it been sufficiently detached from influences which, however ennobling in another domain, have always proved hindrances and delusions when introduced as factors into the domain of physics, the scientific mind never could have swerved from the search for a law of growth, or allowed itself to accept the anthropomorphism which regarded each successive stratum as a kind of mechanic's bench for the manufacture of new species out of all relation to the old.

Biased, however, by their previous education, the great majority of naturalists invoked a special creative act to account for the appearance of each new group of organisms. Doubtless there were numbers who were clear-headed enough to see that this was no explanation at all; that, in point of fact, it was an attempt, by the introduction of a greater difficulty, to account for a less. But, having nothing to offer in the way of explanation, they for the most part held their peace. Still the thoughts of reflecting men naturally and necessarily simmered round the question. De Maillet, a contemporary of Newton, has been brought into notice by Prof. Huxley as one who "had a notion of the modifiability of living forms." In my frequent conversations with him, the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, a man of highly-philosophic mind, often drew my attention to the fact that, as early as 1794, Charles Darwin's grandfather was the pioneer of Charles Darwin. In 1801, and in subsequent years, the celebrated Lamarck, who produced so profound an impression on the public mind through the vigorous exposition of his views by the author of "Vestiges of Creation," endeavored to show the development of species out of changes of habit and external condition. In 1813, Dr. Wells, the founder of our present theory of dew, read before the Royal Society a paper in which, to use the words of Mr. Darwin, "he distinctly recognizes the principle of natural selection; and this is the first recognition that has been indicated." The thoroughness and skill with which Wells pursued his work, and the obvious independence of his character, rendered him long ago a favorite with me; and it gave me the liveliest pleasure to