United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Such being the general ferment in the minds of naturalists, it is no wonder that they mustered strong in the rooms of the Linnaean Society, on the 1st of July of the year 1858, to hear two papers by authors living on opposite sides of the globe, working out their results independently, and yet professing to have discovered one and the same solution of all the problems connected with species.

The greatest savants find this; and have their Microscopic Society, Linnaean, Royal, Geological Societies, British Associations, and what not, in which all may know what each has done, and each share in the learning of all; for as iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpens the face of his friend.

The posterior development is so marked, that anatomists have assigned to that part the character of a third lobe; 'it is peculiar to the genus Homo, and equally peculiar is the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle and the 'hippocampus minor, which characterise the hind lobe of each hemisphere'." 'Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society, Vol. ii. p. 19.

This distinguished botanist published his "Introductory Essay to the Flora of Australia" in December 1859, the year after the memoir on "Natural Selection" was communicated to the Linnaean Society, and a month after the appearance of the "Origin of Species."

Darwin placed the matter in the hands of Dr. Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell, by whose advice he communicated a brief abstract of his own views to the Linnaean Society, at the same time that Mr. Wallace's paper was read. Of that abstract, the work on the 'Origin of Species' is an enlargement; but a complete statement of Mr.

We have the type of many species of foliage, and even of the most delicate flower; for, in this way, naturalists have determined, according to the Linnaean system, the species, or at least the genus, of the plant. Thus, the existence of a vegetable system at the period now in contemplation, so far from being doubtful, is a matter of physical demonstration.

A member of the Linnaean Society has informed us that of fourteen members who died in 1870, two were over ninety, five were over eighty, and two were over seventy. The average age of all the members who died in that year was seventy-five.

Still I have not succeeded in describing the immense labour there was in learning to distinguish plants on the Linnaean system. Then comes in order of time the natural system, the geographical distribution; then there is the geological relationship, so to say, to Pliocene plants, natural selection and evolution. Of that let us say nothing; let sleeping dogs lie, and evolution is a very weary dog.

The man of science clings to his object, as the marsupial embryo to its teat, until he has filled himself as full as he can hold; the poet takes a sip of his dew-drop, throws his head up like a chick, rolls his eyes around in contemplation of the heavens above him and the universe in general, and never thinks of asking a Linnaean question as to the flower that furnished him his dew-drop.

In fact, at the present time there are very numerous groups, both in animals and plants, on the species of which scarcely any two experts are agreed. In many cases a Linnaean species has been split up till it became, first, a genus, then a family, and, in some cases, an order.