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A GREAT NATURALIST.

BY HAMILTON W. MABLE.

 CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN was one of the men for whose work circumstances seem to prepare the best time and the most helpful environment. He was, to begin with, the son of his father and the grandson of his grandfather. The former was a man of generous accomplishments and very considerable ability; the former famous in his day as naturalist, physician, philosopher and poet, the contemporary of Dr. Johnson, and of wide repute in the England of the eighteenth century. The three men were successively Fellows of the Royal Society, each conserved and advanced the inherited scientific culture and influence of the family, and the grandson completed the work which the grandfather began. Dr. Erasmus Darwin would hardly have ventured into verse in any other age of English poetry than the pedantic and conventional period in which he lived, and "The Botanic Garden" has only the interest of a curious collection of specimens which came under the eye of an acute naturalist and were transfixed in very bad verse. Dr. Darwin had something of the poetic instinct, however, and was not without the prophetic sense which enables the poets to hint at great inventions and discoveries centuries before they are actually made. Puck put his girdle round the earth in forty minutes about two hundred and eighty years before Mr. Field's energy accomplished the same result with a cable and a jar of electricity. Darwin had his glimpses into the future, and outlined the theory of the development of animal life which his illustrious grandson has applied to a vast range of facts. The poet and the scientist are not so far apart as they sometimes seem to be.

When Charles Robert Darwin opened his eyes upon the world at Shrewsbury, on the 12th of February, 1809, Taine, had he been present, casting the horoscope of the new comer with the elements of time, race and environment, could safely have predicted the future of this descendant of an eighteenth century savan. The boy started at once on the road which stretched straight before him to wide usefulness and a noble fame. From the public school in his native town be went to the University of Edinburgh, where he spent two years, and then removed to Christ's College, Cambridge. His scholastic life ended in 1831, and at twenty-two his aptitude for scientific study and research was so marked that there was no question as to his profession; nature had kindly decided that matter for him. As soon as his preparation for active work was complete the work began, and it never ceased until last week. In December of the year in which he left Cambridge, the Beagle Exploring Expedition, under command of Captain Fitzroy, sailed from England and made a cruise of nearly five years, during which a partial survey was made of South America and the circumnavigation of the globe accomplished. Darwin accompanied the expedition, and upon his return to England gave the world the results of his long absence in that admirable work, "The Voyage of a Naturalist," which disclosed the candor and frankness of spirit and marvelously fine faculty of observation with which the whole reading world has since become familiar.

The years that followed were busy ones, and bore fruit in several important contributions to various departments of scientific knowledge, but it was not until 1859 that the quality and range of Darwin's mind were fully understood even by his co-workers in scientific lines. In that year appeared "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life." The significance of the theory presented in this book was seen at once, and its publication was the beginning of a controversy which has raged for almost a quarter of a century. Whatever may be the verdict of that wider and deeper knowledge which a future generation will bring to the examination of the Darwinian theory, he must be blind indeed to the intellectual movement of the age who does not place this work side by side with the epoch-making books of the world. True or false, it has made a wide stir among thinking men, modified greatly the views of a vast multitude, and given impulse and direction to investigations and speculations of the greatest moment. In 1871 the publication of the "Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," was the signal for another outburst of debate in what must be regarded, taking into account its ramifications and consequences, as the most serious and important discussion of modern times. "The Power of Movement In Plants," which appeared in 1880, is a marvel of trained skill in investigation and of lucid and interesting statement; a revelation of the range and delicacy of scientific inquiry, and the charm and potency of scientific methods.

Darwin married, in 1839, his cousin, Miss Emma Wedgwood, and for many years had a charming home at Down, in Kent, where he carried on his studies amid the quiet beauty of one of the loveliest counties in England. Of late years his white hair and beard have given him a venerable aspect, and his singularly attractive face held its charm to the very end. A genial temperament, a hearty manner, and a genuine elevation of nature made Darwin one of the noblest as he was one of the most famous Englishmen of his day. His welcome was worth crossing the seas to receive, and the hospitality of his home was something to remember. A large family grew up about him to maturity and usefulness and became his loving co-laborers, and, to make his environment for work more propitious, an inherited fortune relieved him from all care and left him free to devote his life to his chosen pursuits. His views naturally provoked sharp antagonism and at the beginning made him widely unpopular; but fuller recognition of the candid spirit and genuine manhood of the great naturalist did much to soften the asperities of discussion and to dissipate the prejudices of bigotry and ignorance. It was a significant tribute to Darwin's genius and character when in the autumn of 1877 he appeared in the scarlet gown in the University Hall at Cambridge to receive the degree of D. C. L. and was greeted with a storm of cheers. The world generally knows its great man at the end, however it may have slighted or derided his claims at the beginning. Full of years and of honors Darwin has gone on to the larger knowledge of the life beyond, and, whatever final word may be spoken concerning his scientific beliefs, his bitterest opponent cannot deny that he has enriched the world by the singular honesty and candor of his mind, the steadfastness of his energy, the beauty a completeness of his life.

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[Anon]

─ Your readers will have heard of the death of Charles Darwin, and his burial in Westminster Abbey. Opinion is not unanimous anent the universal operation of the law of evolution which he propounded, and with which his name will always be identified, but the religious objection to it is generally and perceptibly allayed. However far some of Darwin's disciples may go in excluding God from nature, he, although confining himself, as a scientist, to which, are seen, never denied that there was and is behind all these things a Spiritual Power creative and all-controlling.