Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/691

Rh alight upon this additional testimony to his penetration. Prof. Grant, Mr. Patrick Matthew, Von Buch, the author of the "Vestiges," D'Halloy, and others, by the enunciation of views more or less clear and correct, showed that the question had been fermenting long prior to the year 1858, when Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simultaneously, but independently, placed their closely concurrent views upon the subject before the Linnæan Society.

These papers were followed in 1859 by the publication of the first edition of "The Origin of Species." All great things come slowly to the birth. Copernicus, as I informed you, pondered his great work for thirty-three years. Newton for nearly twenty years kept the idea of Gravitation before his mind; for twenty years also he dwelt upon his discovery of Fluxions, and doubtless would have continued to make it the object of his private thought had he not found that Liebnitz was upon his track. Darwin for two-and-twenty years pondered the problem of the origin of species, and doubtless he would have continued to do so had he not found Wallace upon his track. A concentrated but full and powerful epitome of his labors was the consequence. The book was by no means an easy one; and probably not one in every score of those who then attacked it had read its pages through, or was competent to grasp their significance if they had. I do not say this merely to discredit them, for there were in those days some really eminent scientific men, entirely raised above the heat of popular prejudice, willing to accept any conclusion that science had to offer, provided it was duly backed by fact and argument, and who entirely mistook Mr. Darwin's views. In fact, the work needed an expounder, and it found one in Mr. Huxley. I know nothing more admirable in the way of scientific exposition than those early articles of his on the origin of species. He swept the curve of discussion through the really significant points of the subject, enriched his exposition with profound original remarks and reflections, often summing up in a single pithy sentence an argument which a less compact mind would have spread over pages. But there is one impression made by the book itself which no exposition of it, however luminous, can convey, and that is the impression of the vast amount of labor, both of observation and of thought, implied in its production. Let us glance at its principles.

It is conceded on all hands that what are called varieties are continually produced. The rule is probably without exception. No chick and no child is in all respects and particulars the counterpart of its brother or sister; and in such differences we have "variety" incipient. No naturalist could tell how far this variation could be carried; but