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. [Footnote 1: 'The Westminster Review', April 1860.] [Footnote 2: On the Osteology of the Chimpanzees and Orangs: Transactions of the Zoological Society, 1858.] [Footnote 3: 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.] [Footnote 4: Recent investigations tend to show that this statement is not strictly accurate.--1870.] [Footnote 5: See 'Phil. Zoologique,' vol. i. p. 222, 'et seq.'] End of Project Gutenberg's The Origin of Species, by Thomas H. Huxley