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HONOUR TO MR. DARWIN

THE following address to Mr. Darwin, from New Zealand, speaks for itself:—

To Charles Darwin, Esq.

SIR,—We, the members of the Council of the Otago Institute, beg to offer you our congratulations on this, the

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twenty-first anniversary of the publication of your great work, the "Origin of Species."

However limited the field of our own labours may be, we cannot but be sensible of the influence which that work has had throughout the whole domain of Natural Science, and especially upon Biology, which, as one great comprehensive Science, may be said to owe its very existence to the fact that you made belief in Evolution possible by your theory of Natural Selection.

We are glad to think that you have lived to see the almost universal acceptance of the great doctrine which it has been the work of your life to establish; it is hardly an exaggeration to say that every important Botanical or Zoological discovery of the last twenty-one years, particularly in the departments of Embryology and Palæontology, has tended to fill up some gap in the evidence you had originally collected, and to make Evolution no longer a theory, but an established doctrine of Science.

We hope that you may long live to continue your labours and to see the further spread of their influence upon all scientific thought and upon all higher scientific work.

We are, sir, your obedient servants,

THOS. MORGAN HOCKER President¹

GEORGE M. THOMSON Hon. Sec.

HENRY SKEY Hon. Treasurer

 

Dunedin, New Zealand, October 1, 1880.

¹ This should have read Thos. Morland Hocken.