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. Darwin's doctrine is looked for in the large and well-illustrated work
which he is said to be preparing for publication.

The Darwinian hypothesis has the merit of being eminently simple and
comprehensible in principle, and its essential positions may be stated in a
very few words: all species have been produced by the development of
varieties from common stocks; by the conversion of these, first into
permanent races and then into new species, by the process of _natural
selection_, which process is essentially identical with that artificial
selection by which man has originated the races of domestic animals--the
_struggle for existence_ taking the place of man, and exerting, in the
case of natural selection, that selective action which he performs in
artificial selection.

The evidence brought forward by Mr. Darwin in support of his hypothesis is
of three kinds. First, he endeavours to prove that species may be
originated by selection; secondly, he attempts to show that natural causes
are competent to exert selection; and thirdly, he tries to prove that the
most remarkable and apparently anomalous phaenomena exhibited by the
distribution, development, and mutual relations of species, can be shown to
be deducible from the general doctrine of their origin, which he propounds,
combined with the known facts of geological change; and that, even if all
these phaenomena are not at present explicable by it, none are necessarily
inconsistent with it.

There cannot be a doubt that the method of inquiry which Mr. Darwin has
adopted is not only rigorously in accordance with the canons of scientific