could be affirmed that the general doctrine of the derivation of species
(to put it comprehensively) has prevailed over that of specific creation,
at least to the extent of being the received and presumably in some sense
true conception. Far from undertaking any general discussion of evolution,
several even of Mr. Darwin's writings have not been noticed, and topics
which have been much discussed elsewhere are not here adverted to. This
applies especially to what may be called deductive evolution--a subject
which lay beyond the writer's immediate scope, and to which neither the
bent of his mind nor the line of his studies has fitted him to do justice.
If these papers are useful at all, it will be as showing how these new views
of our day are regarded by a practical naturalist, versed in one department
only (viz., Botany), most interested in their bearings upon its special
problems, one accustomed to direct and close dealings with the facts in
hand, and disposed to rise from them only to the consideration of those
general questions upon which they throw or from which they receive
illustration.

Then as to the natural theological questions which (owing to circumstances
needless now to be recalled or explained) are here throughout brought into
what most naturalists, and some other readers, may deem undue prominence,
there are many who may be interested to know how these increasingly
prevalent views and their tendencies are regarded by one who is
scientifically, and in his own fashion, a Darwinian, philosophically a
convinced theist, and religiously an acceptor of the "creed commonly called
the Nicene," as the exponent of the Christian faith.
"Truth emerges sooner from error than from confusion," says Bacon; and
clearer views than commonly prevail upon the points at issue regarding
"religion and science" are still sufficiently needed to justify these
endeavors.