ences.

It was really a singular piece of good luck that gave to me any
share whatever in the discovery. During the first half of the
nineteenth century (and even earlier) many great biological
thinkers and workers had been pondering over the problem and had
even suggested ingenious but inadequate solutions. Some of these
men were among the greatest intellects of our time, yet, till
Darwin, all had failed; and it was only Darwin's extreme desire to
perfect his work that allowed me to come in, as a very bad second,
in the truly Olympian race in which all philosophical biologists,
from Buffon and Erasmus Darwin to Richard Owen and Robert
Chambers, were more or less actively engaged.

And this brings me to the very interesting question: Why did so
many of the greatest intellects fail, while Darwin and myself hit
upon the solution of this problem--a solution which this
Celebration proves to have been (and still to be) a satisfying one
to a large number of those best able to form a judgment on its
merits? As I have found what seems to me a good and precise answer
to this question, and one which is of some psychological interest,
I will, with your permission, briefly state what it is.

On a careful consideration, we find a curious series of
correspondences, both in mind and in environment, which led Darwin
and myself, alone among our contemporaries, to reach identically
the same theory.

First (and most important, as I believe), in early life both
Darwin and myself became ardent beetle-hunters. Now there is
certainly no group of organisms that so impresses the collector by
the almost infinite number of its specific forms, the endless
modifications of structure, shape, colour, and surface-markings
that distinguish them from each other, and their innumerable
adaptations to diverse environments. These interesting features
are exhibited almost as strikingly in temperate as in tropical
regions, our own comparatively limited island-fauna possessing
more than 3,000 species of this one order of insects.

Again, both Darwin and myself had what he terms "the mere passion
for collecting," not that of studying the minutiae of structure,
either internal or external. I should describe it rather as an
intense interest in the variety of living things--the variety that
catches the eye of