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LLD translation of Pub Or

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Speech delivered by the Public Orator in the Senate House at Cambridge 17 Nov. 1877

Worshipful Mr Vice Chancellor & Members of the University:─

You remember the saying of Horace "Fortes creantur fortibus" (from the strong the strong are bred) & I need hardly therefore remind you that the distinguished master of Natural Science now before us comes of a Father who was eminent as a great physician and of a grandfather no less eminent as a poet. "Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam" (but learning kindus genius, flame), and it I pleasant to remember that his boyhood was fostered by the famous school of Shrewsbury, his youth nurtured not only by the Athens of the north but also by the college of Milton in our own University.

We may fancy that the nymph of the stream flows by his old home, the

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Sabrina of Milton's song

"She who heaves her rosy head

"From her coral-paven bed"

Should, as she thinks of her distinguished alumnus, the first discoverer of the origin of the Coral Islands, wreath a garland of her own for his now venerable brow.

What a delightful story it was of the growth of these island-rings, rising inch by inch out of the water, marking, as we may say, with a crown of immortal flowers and palms of victory, the green and quiet spots in the wash of ocean where before the vanished islands of a bygone day. has disappeared & lay buried in the deep. What a spirited description he has given us of the various ways in which the face and eyes with the silent eloquence of the eyes can express with their silent eloquence the various emotions of the mind, of the contrivances by which a bee, as it sips the nectar of a flower, becomes the means of supplying it with the pollen that is to

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produce fresh plants. How beautifully he explains the mechanics of the little plant we call "Venus' fly trap;" of the ancestry of the "hoarse-throated pigeon," "bird that draws the var of Line;" of the ways in which the wooings of the feathered tribes are helped by the charm of song & glow of plumage. With what mastery his discourses to us of of pleasure he handles the whole range of animal life (like the wise King of old) the "fowls of the air & the fishes of the sea and that which creepeth on the ground;" what various learning he shews in his monograph on that strange subject of mythical story, the barnacle; in his exposition of the wonders of volcanic mountains, and of the laws by which the delicate tendril of the vine and the spring of the climbing ivy sprang follow the guidance of the suns rays; with what large comprehension, now he brings withing the sweep of his argument creatures as widely different as the "peacock of the golden age" and the unlovely tribe of apes.

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Touching which last animals though the old Poet says "simia quam similes nobis" we may yet have the satisfaction consolation of saying with the Roman orator, who was a great philosopher too, "Mores in utroques dispares." (The moral nature of the two races is different)

One thing at least is beyond all controversy, that a life spent in the contemplation of the infinite variety of nature, in travels to far away lands, in penetrating the solitudes of untrodden forests, in exploring the secrets of almost unknown islands, in comparing and distinguishing the various forms of animal life is a noble thing; that it is a still nobler achievement to have recorded the results of all this keen observation in a form which is alike useful to the world & delightful as an addition to the monuments of our literature; that the noblest task of all is that of reducing the an infinite mass of facts to the smallest number of general laws, and thus tracking them to their

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primal cause. Most worthy of our admiration is the man, who while yet a youth, zealous for the advantage of others rather than for his own, explored so many countries and described so happily the results of his explorations; what he saw who in matured life has given himself to the thorough investigation of the various forms of animal life of upon the globe, lending his efforts mainly to the establishment of that great law by which, in his view the incessant struggle for existence of rival forms has produced the victorious survival in each case of the species best fitted to perpetuate its stock, so that the various living forms, diverse as they are, may be taken to have been evolved one from another by a succession of small changes spread over an enormous series of years.

To you, Sir, therefore, who have been so learned an expander of the laws of nature, we offer the degree of doctor of laws in our University.

I present to you, members of the University, Charles Darwin.

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Public Orator's Speech