[6] Some critics do not even take the trouble to read. I have recently been adjured with much solemnity, to state publicly why I have "changed my opinion" as to the value of the palæontological evidence of the occurrence of evolution. To this my reply is, Why should I, when that statement was made seven years ago? An address delivered from the Presidential Chair of the Geological Society, in 1870, may be said to be a public document, inasmuch as it not only appeared in the _Journal_ of that learned body, but was re-published, in 1873, in a volume of "Critiques and Addresses," to which my name is attached. Therein will be found a pretty full statement of my reasons for enunciating two propositions: (1) that "when we turn to the higher _Vertebrata_, the results of recent investigations, however we may sift and criticise them, seem to me to leave a clear balance in favour of the evolution of living forms one from another;" and (2) that the case of the horse is one which "will stand rigorous criticism." Thus I do not see clearly in what way I can be said to have changed my opinion, except in the way of intensifying it, when in consequence of the accumulation of similar evidence since 1870, I recently spoke of the denial of evolution as not worth serious consideration. [7] Writers of this stamp are fond of talking about the Baconian method. I beg them therefore to lay to heart these two weighty sayings of the herald of Modern Science:-- "Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat, propositiones ex verbis, verba notionum tesseræ sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsæ (_id quod basis rei est_) confusæ sint et temere a rebus abstractæ, nihil in iis quæ superstruuntur est firmitudinis."--"Novum Organon," ii. 14. "Huic autem vanitati nonnulli ex modernis summa levitate ita indulserunt, ut in primo capitulo Geneseos et in libro Job et aliis scripturis sacris, philosophiam naturalem fundare conati sint; _inter vivos quærentes mortua_."--_Ibid._, 65.