depth of the still unfathomed mysteries that confront us everywhere. The
endeavour to penetrate these mysteries, to solve some of these problems
which lie everywhere in our path in wandering through the field of
nature, is surely a most legitimate employment for the faculties of man;
and he who has devoted to this endeavour a life of patient, eager, and,
above all, honest toil, undaunted by constant physical weakness and
suffering, and has steadily persevered to the end in his one great aim,
alike through evil report and good report, deserves our gratitude and
our reverence.
Though Darwin did not tear down the curtain which obscures our gaze into
the past and lay bare to our vision the birth of life, and all its
various manifestations upon earth, as has been too rashly said by some
of his enthusiastic disciples, he lifted the veil here and there, and
gave us glimpses which will light the path of those who follow in his
steps, and, even more than this, he showed by his life and by his work,
beyond any one of the age in which we live, the true methods by which
alone the secrets of nature may be won.
THE END
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement
of Science. Newcastle-on-Tyne Meeting, 11th September 1889.
[2] Presidential Address to the Museums Association at the Meeting in
London, 3rd July 1893.
[3] The corresponding figures for the year 1897-98 are: Class IV., Total
vote, £10,777,537--British Museum, £162,439.
[4] Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement
of Science. Report of Newcastle-on-Tyne Meeting, 1889.
[5] _Journal of the Society of Arts_, 18th December 1891.
[6] _Nature_, vol. xli. p. 177, and _infra_ p. 58.
[7] From a letter in support of the establishment of a County Museum for
Buckinghamshire (24th November 1891), and an address at the opening of
the Perth Museum (29th November 1895).
[8] Suggestions for the formation and arrangement of a museum of Natural
History in connection with a Public School. _Nature_, vol. xli. p. 177
(1889).
[9] Published under the title of “Natural History as a Vocation,” in
_Chambers’s Journal_, 10th April 1897.
[10] 3rd November 1890.
[11] Presidential Address to the Anatomical Section of the International
Medical Congress. London, 4th August 1881.
[12] By an Act of Parliament, passed in the 18th year of the reign of
George II., entitled, “An Act for making the Surgeons of London and the
Barbers of London two separate and distinct Corporations,” it was
enacted that the union and incorporation of the Barbers and Surgeons of
London, made by the Act of the 32nd year of King Henry VIII., should
from and after the 24th day of June, 1745, be dissolved, and that such
of the members of the said united Company who were Freemen of the said
Company, and admitted and approved Surgeons, within the Rules of the
said Company, and their successors, should from thenceforth be made a
separate and distinct Body Corporate and Commonalty Perpetual, which at
all times thereafter was to be called by the name of “The Master,
Governors, and Commonalty of the Art and Science of Surgeons of London.”
The first Charter of the Company dates from the first year of the reign
of King Edward IV. (A.D. 1461).
[13] _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_, vol. ix. May 1875.
[14] The hope expressed above was soon realised in the magnificent
bequest of Sir Erasmus Wilson, who died in 1884, leaving nearly the
whole of his property, amounting to upwards of £200,000, to the College
of Surgeons unfettered by any conditions. The part that I was permitted
to take in bringing about this great benefit to the Museum cause has
always been a source of unmitigated satisfaction to me.
[15] Delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 14th
February 1870.
[16] Owen in _Works of John Hunter_, Palmer’s edition, vol. iv. p. vi.
[17] An account of this transaction, with some important remarks upon it
by Mr. Clift, is appended to Professor Owen’s edition of Hunter’s
_Essays and Observations_, referred to above. The late Sir Benjamin C.
Brodie in his autobiography, prefixed to Mr. Charles Hawkins’ edition of
his works (1865, vol. i. p. 102), speaks of it in the following words:
“Some years before his [Sir Everard Home’s] death, he got great
discredit from having destroyed a considerable portion of John Hunter’s
manuscripts which had come into his possession as one of Hunter’s
executors. This act was equally unjustifiable and foolish. It was
unjustifiable because the manuscripts should have been considered as
belonging to the museum, which Parliament had purchased; and it was
foolish, because it has led to the notion that he had made use of John
Hunter’s observations for his own purposes much more than was really the
case. I had frequent opportunities of seeing these papers during nine or
ten years, in which I was accustomed, more or less, conjointly with Mr.
Clift, to assist him in his dissections. They consisted of rough notes
on the anatomy of animals, which must have been useful to Hunter
himself, or which would, I doubt not, have afforded help to Mr. Owen in
completing the catalogue of the museum; but they were not such as could
be used with much advantage by another person. In pursuing his own
investigations, Home sometimes referred to these; but I must say that,
while I was connected with him, I never knew an instance in which he did
not scrupulously acknowledge whatever he took from them, or do justice
to his illustrious predecessor. Unhappily, he was led afterwards to
deviate from this right course; and in his later publications I
recognise some things which he has given as the result of his own
observation, though they were really taken from Hunter’s notes and
drawings. One of these is a paper on the progressive motion of animals,
and another a series of engravings, representing the convolutions of the
intestinal canal, and neither of them of much scientific value.”--See
also a note on the same subject in the obituary notice of Sir B. Brodie
in the _Lancet_, 25th October 1862.
It is very possible that the extent to which Home made use of these
manuscripts had been much exaggerated; but Brodie certainly did not
fully appreciate either their value or the amount of Home’s plagiarism.
It is not in his latest writings, but in the first volume of his
lectures on Comparative Anatomy, published in 1814, that these chiefly
occur, as will be seen by the editorial notes appended by Professor Owen
to Hunter’s Essays. The only justification which can be set up for Home
is, that the observations quoted without acknowledgment were really made
by him when acting as Hunter’s pupil or assistant, and had become
incorporated in the papers of his master; but nothing of the kind
appears ever to have been alleged, and this, of course, would be no
excuse for first retaining possession of, and subsequently destroying
nearly the whole of the manuscripts.
[18] Baden Powell, _Unity of Worlds and of Nature_, 2nd edition, 1856,
p. 448.
[19] A work in many respects far in advance of the age in which it
appeared (1844). It was published anonymously, but is now known to have
been written by Robert Chambers of Edinburgh.
[20] Charles Darwin was grandson of Erasmus Darwin, mentioned above.
[21] _Natural Selection not inconsistent with Natural Theology: a Free
Examination of Darwin’s Treatise on the Origin of Species._ Boston,
1861.
[22] For the bearings of the Evolution theory of Creation on this
subject, see Baden Powell, _op. cit._
[23] Owen on the “Aye-Aye.” _Trans. Zool. Soc._ vol. v. p. 92.
[24] In New Guinea and North Australia there are actually species of
kangaroos, constituting the genus _Dendrolagus_, which habitually reside
in trees; not climbing among the smaller boughs, as is the manner of the
koalas and opossums, but sitting on the larger horizontal branches.
Their feet present a marked deviation from those of the common kangaroos
of the plains, the deviation being _in the direction_ of the feet of the
koala. They are shorter and broader; the lateral toes are relatively
more developed, and are on the same plane with the fourth or large toe,
and although they have no hallux or first toe, the bone of the tarsus
(internal cuneiform), which usually supports that digit, is of
relatively larger size.
The phalangers, a family of climbing vegetable-feeding marsupials, form
another link in the structure of their feet between the kangaroo and the
koala, though most nearly resembling the latter. On the other hand, in a
very remarkable little ground-dwelling animal, the _Chœropus_, the
kangaroo type of foot is modified in the opposite direction, all the
digits except the fourth being reduced to excessively rudimentary
proportions.
[25] In examining into the validity of the derivative hypothesis, much
is to be expected from the study of the geographical distribution of
animals and plants, both in present and in former times; but such study
will be quite in vain unless morphologists have first determined
correctly the affinities of the animals and plants treated of. It is
obvious that all inferences from geographical or palæontological
research are useless, unless the classification on which they are based
is at least approximately true to nature.
[26] The two great branches of the mammalia referred to are--(1) the
Monodelphous, or placental, comprising the great bulk of the animals of
the class; and (2) the Didelphous, or nonplacental. The latter, which
are the animals commonly known as _Marsupialia_, or pouched animals,
though varying extremely in the structure of the feet, teeth, etc., also
in their food and manner of life, all agree together, and differ from
the monodelphia in numerous important characters of the skeleton, brain,
heart, and especially of the reproductive organs and processes. The
marsupials are, at the present day, entirely confined to Australia, its
neighbouring islands, and the American continent, though, in former
times, they had a more extensive geographical range.
[27] Published originally in the _Month_, 1869.
[28] Paper read at the Church Congress (Reading Meeting), 2nd October
1883.
[29] Reply to an Address presented to the President of the British
Association by representatives of the various Trade Societies
constituting the Newcastle-on-Tyne, Gateshead, and District
Trades-Council at the Working Men’s Meeting, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 14th
September 1889.
[30] Lecture at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 25th April 1873.
This essay represents the state of our knowledge twenty-five years ago.
The accumulation of facts since that date, especially through the
labours of the able palæontologists working in the rich fields of
discovery in America has been enormous. If the essay were recast now,
the scheme of classification at p. 144 would be crowded with additional
names, but the main outlines would remain the same. Many gaps would be
filled up, which would strengthen the argument, but it is perhaps more
easily followed in the comparatively simple form in which it is here
presented.
[31] Presidential address in the Department of Zoology and Botany.
British Association. Dublin Meeting, 15th August 1878.
[32] Address to the General Meeting of the Society, held in the
Zoological Gardens in celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Her
Majesty’s reign, 16th June 1887.
[33] Who was present at the reading of this address.
[34] Lecture at the Royal Colonial Institute, 8th January 1895.
[35] All the figures which illustrate this paper are taken, with the
kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. A. & C. Black, from Flower &
Lydekker’s _Introduction to the Study of Mammals_.
[36] The skeleton is almost the only part of a whale which can be
satisfactorily preserved, but life-sized models of the principal species
will soon be exhibited in the British Natural History Museum.
[37] Lecture at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 25th May 1883.
[38] The muscles of the forearm of an allied species, _Balænoptera
rostrata_, were described by Macalister in 1868, and Perrin in 1870.
[39] British Association for the Advancement of Science (York Meeting),
1st September 1881.
[40] _Spectator_, 23rd April 1881.
[41] _Endymion_, vol. ii. p. 205.
[42] Webster’s _Dictionary_.
[43] British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford
Meeting), 9th August 1894.
[44] Address delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 27th January 1885.
[45] The Malay of Blumenbach was a strange conglomeration of the then
little known Australian, Papuan, and true Malay types.
[46] Further information upon the Negrillos and Bushmen, and later views
as to their relations to each other and to the true Negroes, will be
found in the article which follows “On the Pygmy Races of Men.”
[47] Lecture at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 13th April 1888.
[48] Herodotus, Book ii. 32, Rawlinson’s translation, p. 47.
[49] _Eléments d’Anthropologie Général_, p. 463. Paris, 1885.
[50] See “On the Osteology and Affinities of the Natives of the Andaman
Islands” (_Journal Anthropological Institute_, vol. ix. p. 108, 1879);
and “Additional Observations on the Osteology of the Natives of the
Andaman Islands” (_ibid._ vol. xiv. p. 115, 1884).
[51] The scattered information upon this subject was first collected
together by Hamy in his “Essai de co-ordination des Matériaux récemment
recueillis sur l’ethnologie des Négrilles ou Pygmées de l’Afrique
équatoriale,” _Bull. Soc. d’Anthropologie de Paris_, tome ii. (ser.
iii.), 1879, p. 79.
[52] _A Journey to Ashango-land_, 1867, p. 315.
[53] _Through the Dark Continent_, vol. ii.
[54] _La Gazette Géographique_, 1887, p. 153, quoted by Quatrefages.
[55] In a paper read before the Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain and Ireland, 14th February 1888, and published in the August
number of the Journal.
[56] In his letters Emin speaks of an Akka man as “3 feet 6 inches”
high, though this does not profess to be an observation of scientific
accuracy as does the above. He says of this man that his whole body was
covered by thick, stiff hair, almost like felt, as was the case with all
the Akkas he had yet examined.
[57] Since this was written indications of the existence of a dwarf
tribe in Mount Atlas have been collected and published by Mr. R. G.
Haliburton, and Sergi and Kollman have adduced evidence tending to show
the former extension of small races into several regions of Southern and
Central Europe.
[58] The substance of this essay was delivered as a lecture at the Royal
Institution of Great Britain, on the evening of Friday, 7th May 1880,
and subsequently published in the _Proceedings_ of that body. It was
republished as a separate work with additional illustrations (Macmillan
& Co., 1881).
[59] See _Bits and Bearing-Reins_, by Edward Fordham Flower: London,
1879.
[60] A word used by the natives of Tahiti, spelt _tattowing_ by Cook,
who gives a minute account of the method in which it is performed in
that island. _First Voyage_, vol. ii. p. 191.
[61] _First Voyage_, vol. ii. p. 633.
[62] _Voyage Round the World_, ed. 1717, vol. i. p. 32.
[63] H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States of North
America_, vol. i. 1875.
[64] See Bancroft, _op. cit._ vol. i., for numerous citations from
original observers regarding these customs.
[65] _Heart of Africa_, vol. i. p. 297.
[66] The mutilation of both lips was also observed by Rohlfs among the
women of Kadje, in Segseg, between Lake Tsad and the Benwe.
[67] _Cook’s First Voyage_, vol. iii. p. 456.
[68] Hamy, _Revue d’Anthropologie_, January 1879, p. 22.
[69] A tribe of Indians inhabiting the neighbourhood of the Columbia
River, North America.
[70] Bancroft, _op. cit._ vol. i. p. 238.
[71] T. K. Townsend, _Journey to the Columbia River_, p. 175.
[72] Vol. iv. p. 388.
[73] Morton’s _Crania Americana_, p. 116.
[74] A gentleman of advanced age lately [1879] showed me a circular
depression round the upper part of his head, which he believed had been
produced in this manner, as the custom was still prevailing at the time
of his birth in the district of Norfolk, of which he was a native.
[75] Sydenham Society’s edition, by Dr. Adam, vol. i. p. 270.
[76] Gosse, “Essai sur les Déformations artificielles du Crane,”
_Annales d’Hygiene_, 2 ser. tom. iv. p. 8.
[77] Ample references to the literature of artificially produced
deformities of the cranium are given by Prof. Rolleston, in Greenwell’s
_British Barrows_ (1877), p. 596. To these may be added, Lenhossek, _Des
Déformations artificielles du Cranes_, etc., Budapest, 1878, and
Topinard, “Des Déformations ethniques du Crane,” in the _Revue d’
Anthropologie_, July 1879, p. 496.
[78] American missionary at Swatow; _Times_, 2nd September 1880.
[79] Dr. Jamieson says, “The fashionable length for a Chinese lady’s
foot is between 3½ and 4 inches, but comparatively few parents succeed
in arresting growth so completely. The above, taken from a woman in the
middle station of life, measures almost exactly 5 inches.”
[80] It seems to be a very common idea with artists and sculptors, as
well as anatomists, that the second toe ought to be longer than the
first in a well-proportioned human foot, and so it is conventionally
represented in art. The idea is derived from the Greek canon, which in
its turn was copied from the Egyptian, and probably originally derived
from the negro. It certainly does not represent what is most usual in
our race and time. Among hundreds of bare and therefore undeformed feet
of children I lately examined in Perthshire, I was not able to find one
in which the second toe was the longest. As in all apes--in fact, in all
other animals--the first toe is considerably shorter than the second, a
long great toe is a specially human attribute, and instead of being
despised by artists, it should be looked upon as a mark of elevation in
the scale of organised beings.
[81] See, among many others, the section headed “Improprieties of
Dress,” in Dr. Gaillard Thomas’s _Practical Treatise on the Diseases of
Women_ (5th edit. 1881, p. 45), for convincing proofs (not mere general
declamation) of the ill effects arising from tight-lacing.
[82] From the _Proceedings of the Royal Society_, vol. xxxiii. 1882,
with slight alterations.
[83] From the _Proceedings of the Royal Society_, vol. lv. 1894, with
slight alterations.