topics of which they treat. I have more than once set about the task: but
the proverb about spoiling a horn and not making a spoon, is particularly
applicable to attempts to remodel a piece of work which may have served its
immediate purpose well enough.

So I have reprinted the lectures as they stand, with all their
imperfections on their heads. It would seem that many people must have
found them useful thirty years ago; and, though the sixties appear now to
be reckoned by many of the rising generation as a part of the dark ages, I
am not without some grounds for suspecting that there yet remains a fair
sprinkling even of "philosophic thinkers" to whom it may be a profitable,
perhaps even a novel, task to descend from the heights of speculation and
go over the A B C of the great biological problem as it was set before a
body of shrewd artisans at that remote epoch.

T. H. H.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, _April 7th_, 1893.




CONTENTS


I THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS [1859]

II THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES [1860]

III CRITICISM ON "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES" [1864]