nversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive
reading."

* * * * *

He now set to work upon that epitome of his observations and deductions
which appeared in November, 1859, as the immortal "Origin of Species."

Those who are old enough to remember the publication of this work,
cannot but marvel at the change, which, since that day, not yet thirty
years ago, has come alike upon the non-scientific and the scientific
part of the community in their estimation of it. Professor Huxley has
furnished to the biography a graphic chapter on the reception of the
book, and in his vigorous and witty style recalls the furious and
fatuous objections that were urged against it. A much longer chapter
will be required to describe the change which the advent of the "Origin
of Species" has wrought in every department of science, and not of
science only, but of philosophy. The principle of evolution, so early
broached and so long discredited, has now at last been proclaimed and
accepted as the guiding idea in the investigation of nature.

One of the most marvellous aspects of Darwin's work was the way in which
he seemed always to throw a new light upon every department of inquiry
into which the course of his researches led him to look. The specialists
who, in their own narrow domains, had been toiling for years, patiently
gathering facts and timidly drawing inferences from them, were
astonished to find that one who, in their eyes, was a kind of outsider,
could point out to them the plain meaning of things which, though
entirely familiar to them, they had never adequately understood. The
central idea of the "Origin of Species" is an example of this in the
biological sciences. The chapter on the imperfection of the geological
record is another.

After the publication of the "Origin" Darwin gave to the world, during a
succession of years, a series of volumes in which some of his
observations and conclusions were worked out in fuller detail. His books
on the fertilization of orchids, on the movements and habits of climbing
plants, on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, on
the effects of cross-and self-fertilization in the vegetable kingdom, on
the different forms of flowers on plants of the same species, were
mainly based on his own quiet work in the greenhouse and garden at Down.
His volumes on the descent of man and on the expression of the emotions
in man and animals