We should leave a very wrong impression on the reader's mind if we permitted him to suppose that the value of that work depends wholly on the ultimate justification of the theoretical views which it contains. On the contrary, if they were disproved to-morrow, the book would still be the best of its kind--the most compendious statement of well-sifted facts bearing on the doctrine of species that has ever appeared. The chapters on Variation, on the Struggle for Existence, on Instinct, on Hybridism, on the Imperfection of the Geological Record, on Geographical Distribution, have not only no equals, but, so far as our knowledge goes, no competitors, within the range of biological literature. And viewed as a whole, we do not believe that, since the publication of Von Baer's Researches on Development, thirty years ago, any work has appeared calculated to exert so large an influence, not only on the future of Biology, but in extending the domination of Science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly penetrated. FOOTNOTES: [62] "On the Osteology of the Chimpanzees and Orangs." Transactions of the Zoological Society, 1858. [63] Colonel Humphreys' statements are exceedingly explicit on this point:--"When an Ancon ewe is impregnated by a common ram the increase resembles wholly either the ewe or the ram. The increase of the common ewe impregnated by an Ancon ram follows entirely the one or the other, without blending any of the distinguishing and essential peculiarities of both. Frequent instances have happened where common ewes have had twins by Ancon rams, when one exhibited the complete marks and features of the ewe, the other of the ram. The contrast has been rendered singularly striking, when one short-legged and one long-legged lamb, produced at a birth, have been seen sucking the dam at the same time."--Philosophical Transactions, 1813, Pt. I. pp. 89, 90. [64] See Phil. Zoologique, vol. i. p. 222, _et seq._ [65] The reader will remember that Huxley was writing in 1860. XIV THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS. DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES There is a growing immensity in the speculations of science to which no human thing or thought at this day is comparable. Apart from the results which science brings us home and securely harvests, there is an expansive force and latitude in its tentative efforts, which lifts us out of ourselves and transfigures our mortality. We may have a preference for moral themes, like the Homeric sage, who had seen and known much:-- "Cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments;" yet we must end by confessing that "The windy ways of men Are but dust which rises up And is lightly laid again," in comparison with the work of nature, to which science testifies, but which has no boundaries in time or space to which science can approximate.