Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

of course possess nerves or a central nervous system; and we may infer that with animals such structures serve only for the more perfect transmission of impressions, and for the more complete intercommunication of the several parts."

Here we see how much light may be thrown on animal structures and functions by vegetable physiology. We learn to limit our ideas of the superiority of animals by discovering how much of what we consider peculiar to them is found in plants. We appreciate the unity of biology, indivisible without injury to our knowledge of its parts. No structure in plants appears more wonderful, as Darwin describes it, than the tip of the rootlet of a seedling. It is impressed by and transmits influences of pressure, injury, moisture, light, and gravity to other parts, and determines the course pursued by the rootlet in penetrating the ground. "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed, and having the power of directing the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the lower animals;" and the brain of Charles Darwin, in working out this acquisition of knowledge for mankind, has added a new department to vegetable physiology and to biology.

ΙΟ

CHAPTER X.

N his later years honours poured thick upon Darwin.

IN

In 1871 he received the Prussian order of knighthood "For Merit"; and was elected a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 1877 Cambridge University, making an exception to its custom of not conferring honorary degrees on its members, gave him the LL.D. and an ovation, when the kindly eyes of the venerable naturalist beamed upon the monkey-figure dangled by undergraduates before him from the galleries, in addition to a solitary link of a huge chain, no doubt representing "the missing link." In 1878 the honour, long withheld, and certainly unsought, of being elected a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences in the section of Zoology, was his; and that tardy body recognised late the man whose supremacy in science it had done nothing either to foster or to approve. In 1879 the Baly Medal of the London College of Physicians was awarded to him.

After the Cambridge celebration a subscription was raised to obtain a portrait of the veteran evolutionist, which was executed by Mr. W. B. Richmond, and now adorns the Philosophical Library of the New Museums at Cambridge. Later, yet another portrait-the finest

LIFE OF DARWIN.

147

in his own and many others' belief-was painted by Mr. John Collier, and presented to the Linnean Society, which will always be associated with the first announcement of Darwin's main theory, as well as with many others of his scientific discoveries.

Professor Haeckel has given the following charming description of Darwin and his home surroundings in his later years: "In Darwin's own carriage, which he had thoughtfully sent for my convenience to the railway station, I drove, one sunny morning in October, through the graceful, hilly landscape of Kent, that with the chequered foliage of its woods, with its stretches of purple heath, yellow broom, and evergreen oaks, was arrayed in its fairest autumnal dress. As the carriage drew up in front of Darwin's pleasant country house, clad in a vesture of ivy and embowered in elms, there stepped out to meet me from the shady porch, overgrown with creeping plants, the great naturalist himself, a tall and venerable figure, with the broad shoulders of an Atlas supporting a world of thought, his Jupiter-like forehead highly and broadly arched, as in the case of Goethe, and deeply furrowed with the plough of mental labour; his kindly, mild eyes looking forth under the shadow of prominent brows; his amiable mouth surrounded by a copious silver-white beard. The cordial, prepossessing expression of the whole face, the gentle, mild voice, the slow, deliberate utterance, the natural and naive train of ideas which marked his conversation, captivated my whole heart in the first hour of our meeting, just as his great work had formerly, on my first reading it, taken my whole understanding by storm. I

fancied a lofty world-sage out of Hellenic antiquity—a Socrates or Aristotle-stood before me."

The well-known botanist, Alphonse de Candolle, thus describes a visit to Down :

"I longed to converse once more with Darwin, whom I had seen in 1839, and with whom I kept up a most interesting correspondence. It was on a fine autumn morning in 1880 that I arrived at Orpington station, where my illustrious friend's break met me. I will not here speak of the kind reception given to me at Down, and of the pleasure I felt in chatting familiarly with Mr. and Mrs. Darwin and their son Francis. I note only that Darwin at seventy was more animated and appeared happier than when I had seen him forty-one years before. His eye was bright and his expression cheerful, whilst his photographs show rather the shape of his head, like that of an ancient philosopher. His varied, frank, gracious conversation, entirely that of a gentleman, reminded me of that of Oxford and Cambridge savants. The general tone was like his books, as is the case with sincere men, devoid of every trace of charlatanism. He expressed himself in English easily understood by a foreigner, more like that of Bulwer or Macaulay, than that of Dickens or Carlyle. I asked him for news of the committee, of which he was a member, for reforming English spelling, and when I said that moderate changes would be best received by the public, he laughingly said, 'As for myself, of course, I am for the most radical changes.' We were more in accord on another point, that a man of science, even

up to advanced age, ought to take an interest in new ideas, and to accept them, if he finds them true. 'That was very strongly the opinion of my friend Lyell,' he said; but he pushed it so far as sometimes to yield to the first objection, and I was then obliged to defend him against himself.' Darwin had more firmness in his opinions, whether from temperament, or because he had published nothing without prolonged reflection.

"Around the house no trace appeared to remain of the former labours of the owner. Darwin used simple means. He was not one who would have demanded to have palaces built in order to accommodate laboratories. I looked for the greenhouse in which such beautiful experiments on hybrid plants had been made. It contained only a vine. One thing struck me, although it is not rare in England, where animals are loved. A heifer and a colt were feeding close to us with the tranquillity which tells of good masters, and I heard the joyful barking of dogs. 'Truly,' I said to myself, 'the history of the variations of animals was written here, and observations must be going on, for Darwin is never idle.' I did not suspect that I was walking above the dwellings of those lowly beings called earthworms, the subject of his last work, in which Darwin showed once more how little causes in the long run produce great effects. He had been studying them for thirty years, but I did not know it.

"Returning to the house, Darwin showed me his library, a large room on the ground floor, very convenient for a studious man; many books on the shelves; windows on two sides; a writing-table and another for apparatus

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »