he explanation of
those facts offered by Mr. Darwin to the theoretical views held by his
predecessors and his contemporaries, and, above all, to the requirements
of scientific logic. We have ventured to point out that it does not, as
yet, satisfy all those requirements; but we do not hesitate to assert
that it is as superior to any preceding or contemporary hypothesis, in
the extent of observational and experimental basis on which it rests,
in its rigorously scientific method, and in its power of explaining
biological phenomena, as was the hypothesis of Copernicus to the
speculations of Ptolemy. But the planetary orbits turned out to be
not quite circular after all, and, grand as was the service Copernicus
rendered to science, Kepler and Newton had to come after him. What if
the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? What if species
should offer residual phenomena, here and there, not explicable by
natural selection? Twenty years hence naturalists may be in a position
to say whether this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they
will owe the author of 'The Origin of Species' an immense debt of
gratitude. We should leave a very wrong impression on the reader's
mind if we permitted him to suppose that the value of that work depends
wholly on the ultimate justification of the theoretical views which it
contains. On the contrary, if they were disproved to-morrow, the book
would still be the best of its kind--the most compendious statement
of well-sifted facts bearing on the doctrine of species that has ever
appeared. The chapters on Variation, on the Struggle for Existence, on
Instinct, on Hybridism, on the Imperfection of the Geological Record, on
Geographical Distribution, have not only no equals, but, so far as
our knowledge goes, no competitors, within the range of biological
literature. And viewed as a whole, we do not believe that, since the
publication of Von Baer's Researches on Development, thirty years ago,
any work has appeared calculated to exert so large an influence, not
only on the future of Biology, but in extending the domination of
Science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly
penetrated.

[Footnote 1: 'The Westminster Review', April 1860.]

[Footnote 2: On the Osteology of the Chimpanzees and Orangs:
Transactions of the Zoological Society, 1858.]

[Footnote 3: Colonel Humphreys' statements are exceedingly explicit
on this point:--"When an Ancon ewe is impre