Like most men who have studied Nature for love of her, Poey possesses a deeply religious spirit. Everything to him proclaims the presence of Divinity. "I believe with Lamarck," he has said, 'that there is nothing but God in the Universe, and that by the word Nature we ought to understand an order of things .. Him whose true name we cannot decipher; who in the burning bush, questioned by Moses, said, 'I am that I am;' who on Mount Sinai called himself Jehovah, and whom in our mortal tongue, with filial tenderness, we call God." 1

.

Poey is rather above the medium height, heavily built, and in his younger days he possessed unusual physical activity and vigor. In appearance he offers a marked contrast to most of his countrymen, the Cubans. His complexion is fair, his hair now white was never dark, and his gray eyes suggest the Saxon rather than the Spaniard. As he once said to me, "Comme naturaliste, je ne suis pas espagnol: je suis cosmopolite." His full forehead, strong features, and handsome, smoothshaven face are not misleading evidences of a pure and benevolent life. He has a most happy temperament, and his smile is peculiarly genial and cheery. Simple, direct, unaffected, he is one of the most delightful of men. Of all men whom I have known, none has better than he learned the art of growing old.

1 Memorias de Cuba, vol. ii. p. 414.

IN

DARWIN.

the

each field of human thought there stand some few great names which mark the epochs in its history. In the study of the living things upon earth these names are three, — Linnæus, Cuvier, and Darwin. Old as the world was when Linnæus was born, before him scarcely any one had thought of flowers and birds and butterflies as objects of serious study. The "Christian Era" of biology begins with the year 1758; 1 and the death of the great Swede who rocked the cradle of the infant science took place little more than a century ago.

Linnæus has taught us to name and describe the objects of Nature, that knowledge once gained may be communicated to others. Cuvier has taught us to see unity of structure underlying the greatest diversity of appearance, and to group these objects together in accordance with this unity. Darwin has given us the clew as to the meaning of this unity, — that unity in structure is brotherhood in fact.

Charles Robert Darwin was born in the town of Shrewsbury, Feb. 12, 1809, and died at his country

1 The date of the tenth edition of Linnæus' "Systema Naturæ." Botanists usually begin farther back, at 1737, the date of the "Genera Plantarum."

home at Down, in Kent, on the 19th day of April, 1882, at the age of seventy-three years. A life more calm and peaceful than his, the world does not often see. At home, in the country, surrounded by his family, far away from the noise of politics and undisturbed by clashing systems of philosophy, he worked on in patience. For years, almost an invalid, still feeling the effects of his long seasickness while on the voyage of the "Beagle; averse to display or controversy; sure of the strength of truth, - which some generation would hear, if his own. did not, he sat and watched his flowers and vines and trees and pigeons, reporting from time to time the things he saw and their underlying meanings. "For years," said one of Darwin's servants to me, "Mr. Darwin used to spend his days in the greenhouse with his plants, tying strings to them and trying to make them do things." Nevertheless, this age is the age of Darwin! No life in this bustling nineteenth century has left so deep an impress on our thought. And this impress must deepen as the years roll on, until, if ever, the time shall come when what we now know of the laws of God shall have faded away, and our successors shall begin again to learn like little children their A B C from Mother Nature. "Mother Nature," says Huxley," is singularly obdurate to honeyed words. Only those who understand the ways of things, and can silently and effectively use them, get much good out of her."

In 1831 Darwin was sent out as naturalist on board of Her Majesty's Ship "Beagle," which was to take five years for a cruise around the world.

These five years of minute, detailed observation formed the best of Darwin's scientific training, and they have been the basis of all his later work. The primary results of this voyage were a number of papers and treatises on matters connected with his observations on the geological structure and the fauna and flora of the regions visited, works which brought their author at once to the front rank among the scientific men of England. Then for a long time Darwin published nothing; and it was not until after twenty-five years of elaboration and verification that the main results of the voyage of the "Beagle," his own observations on the changes of animals and plants under varying conditions, came to light in the volume on the "Origin of Species." This was in 1859.

That Darwin had not been idle during these twenty-five years is shown by his own words, — words which may be read with profit by any young man who is anxious for sudden greatness, who wishes to gather his strawberries before they are ripe. He says:

"When on board H. M. S. 'Beagle' as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of the continent. These facts seemed to throw some light on the origin of species, that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home it occurred to me (in 1837) that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts. which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five

years I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes. These I enlarged, in 1844, into a sketch of the conclusions which then seemed to me probable. From that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope that I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a conclusion."

Let me speak of certain traits of this work, the "Origin of Species," which give it a position almost alone among books of science. There is in it no statement of fact of any importance which, during the twenty-five years since it was first published, has been shown to be false. In its theoretical part there is no argument which has been shown to be unfair or fallacious. In these twenty-five years no serious objection has been raised to any important conclusion of his which was not at the time fully anticipated and frankly met by him. Indeed, there are but few of these objections which with our present knowledge are not much less weighty than Darwin then admitted. The progress of science has bridged over many chasms in the evidence.

There is in this work nowhere a suggestion of special pleading or of over-statement. The writer is a judge and not an advocate, and from his decisions there has been no successful appeal. There is in this or any other of Darwin's works scarcely a line of controversial writing. He has been the faithful mirror of Nature. The relations of Nature to metaphysics he has left to others. The tornadoes which have blown about the "Origin of Species" have left him undisturbed. The word