remarked: "That, no doubt, is an air-bee." This noise is considered as a
sign of settled fair weather.


CHAPTER 1.II.--EVOLUTION, 1844-1858.

(Chapter II./1. Since the publication of the "Life and Letters," Mr.
Huxley's obituary notice of Charles Darwin has appeared. (Chapter II./2.
"Proc. R. Soc." volume 44, 1888, and "Collected Essays (Darwiniana)," page
253, 1899.) This masterly paper is, in our opinion, the finest of the
great series of Darwinian essays which we owe to Mr. Huxley. We would
venture to recommend it to our readers as the best possible introduction to
these pages. There is, however, one small point in which we differ from
Mr. Huxley. In discussing the growth of Mr. Darwin's evolutionary views,
Mr. Huxley quotes from the autobiography (Chapter II./3. "Life and
Letters," I., page 82. Some account of the origin of his evolutionary
views is given in a letter to Jenyns (Blomefield), "Life and Letters," II.
page 34.) a passage in which the writer describes the deep impression made
on his mind by certain groups of facts observed in South America. Mr.
Huxley goes on: "The facts to which reference is here made were, without
doubt, eminently fitted to attract the attention of a philosophical
thinker; but, until the relations of the existing with the extinct species,
and of the species of the different geographical areas with one another,
were determined with some exactness, they afforded but an unsafe foundation
for speculation. It was not possible that this determination should have
been effected before the return of the "Beagle" to England; and thus the
date (Chapter II./4. The date in question is July 1837, when he "opened
first note-book on Transmutation of Species.') which Darwin (writing in
1837) assigns to the dawn of the new light which was rising in his mind,
becomes intelligible." This seems to us inconsistent with Darwin's own