was
employed against the Lamarckian views, and, as the untenability of
some of his conclusions was easily shown, his doctrines sank under the
opprobrium of scientific, as well as of theological, heterodoxy.
Nor have the efforts made of late years to revive them tended to
re-establish their credit in the minds of sound thinkers acquainted with
the facts of the case; indeed it may be doubted whether Lamarck has not
suffered more from his friends than from his foes.

Two years ago, in fact, though we venture to question if even the
strongest supporters of the special creation hypothesis had not, now
and then, an uneasy consciousness that all was not right, their position
seemed more impregnable than ever, if not by its own inherent strength,
at any rate by the obvious failure of all the attempts which had been
made to carry it. On the other hand, however much the few, who thought
deeply on the question of species, might be repelled by the generally
received dogmas, they saw no way of escaping from them save by the
adoption of suppositions so little justified by experiment or by
observation as to be at least equally distasteful.

The choice lay between two absurdities and a middle condition of uneasy
scepticism; which last, however unpleasant and unsatisfactory, was
obviously the only justifiable state of mind under the circumstances.

Such being the general ferment in the minds of naturalists, it is no
wonder that they mustered strong in the rooms of the Linnaean Society,
on the 1st of July of the year 1858, to hear two papers by authors
living on opposite sides of the globe, working out their results
independently, and yet professing to have discovered one and the same
solution of all the problems connected with species. The one of these
authors was an able naturalist, Mr. Wallace, who had been employed for
some years in studying the productions of the islands of the Indian
Archipelago, and who had forwarded a memoir embodying his views to
Mr. Darwin, for communication to the Linnaean Society. On perusing the
essay, Mr. Darwin was not a little surprised to find that it embodied
some of the leading ideas of a great work which he had been preparing
for twenty years, and parts of which, containing a development of the
very same views, had been perused by his private friends fifteen or
sixteen years before. Perplexed in what manner to do full justice both
to his friend and to himself, Mr. Darwin placed the matter in the han