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Mr. Darwin's amplification and illustration of the famous Lamarck theory of development, which Paley considered he had "scotched," if not "killed," in that "Natural Theology" which he himself "developed" from a Dutch author, Niewenty, and that without acknowledging the source—is destined to provoke even more full, perhaps more angry, discussion than it has ever yet received.

In his work on the "Origin of Species" Mr. Darwin fully indicated his theory of the progress by means of "natural selection," and promised in due time some of the facts on which his theory was based. How fiercely that theory was combated need not be recapitulated here. Mr. Darwin's book was looked on as a scientific "Essays and Reviews," against which every one who held a pen must make a dash, and everyone who could find a pebble must have a fling. The theory, however, found many disciples and many able supporters. Some accepted it not as original, but merely as confirming previous theories by later and invincible facts.

In his two volumes just published on "The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication" (John Murray), Mr. Darwin, having been hindered by ill-health, has not yet been able to give the full facts on which his theory is based. He has, however, collected a mass of very remarkable facts on the effects produced on pigeons by domestication, as bearing on the general principle of "variation," by whatever cause produced. The work is, of course far too detailed and too technical for full notice here; and it will be enough to say that it is repertory of very remarkable facts on the "variations" produced by domestication, and therefore inferentially of the probable "variations" which "natural selection" during long ages, may have caused. Naturalists will, of course, be divided in opinion as to the worth of the facts and the value of the arguments—the chief fact being that "species" will have to be most scientifically defined before the learned will be able to agree as to what any "variation" is. Leaving Mr. Darwin to fight his own battle in his own way and in his own time, his book must be accepted as a very important "storehouse of facts," valuable not only as the basis of a theory but for practical and even commercial use. However, fiercely all such philosophical theories may be assailed, truth must prevail after full discussion and in good time, and it is a curious sign of our time that the modern tendency is to reduce science to a few simple laws, to explain the phenomena of physics and the wonders of the natural world by Newton's and Kepler's laws, and by "development," by theories like those of Lamarck and the "vestiges" or by the "natural selection" theory which Mr. Darwin has announced and defended with remarkable power.