[7] In his presidential speech at the last meeting of the British Association, Professor Darwin said: "It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that 500 to 1,000 million years may have elapsed since the birth of the moon." [Trans.]
[8] See account of similar experiments in the Lancet, 18th January, 1902. [Trans.]
[9] Wasmann meets these convincing experiments with mere Jesuitical sophistry. Of the same character is his attack on my Evolution of Man, and on the instructive work of Robert Wiedersheim, Man's Structure as a Witness to his Past.
[10] I may remind those who think that the hall of the Musical Academy is "desecrated" by my lectures, that it was in the very same place that Alexander von Humboldt delivered, seventy-seven years ago (1828), the remarkable lectures that afterwards made up his Cosmos. The great traveller, whose clear mind had recognised the unity of Nature, and had, with Goethe, discovered therein the real knowledge of God, endeavoured to convey his thoughts in popular form to the educated Berlin public, and to establish the universality of natural law. It was my aim to establish, as regards the organic world, precisely what Humboldt had proved to exist in inorganic nature. I wanted to show how the great advance of modern biology (since Darwin's time) enables us to solve the most difficult of all problems, the historical development of plants and animals in humanity. Humboldt in his day earned the most lively approval and gratitude of all free-thinking and truth-seeking men, and the displeasure and suspicion of the orthodox and conservative courtiers at Berlin.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
In [Tables 2A] and [2B], 'Ontogeny' column, the character ! was used in the original text. This was probably a printer's error, and has been replaced with I. So ! !! and !!! are displayed as I II and III.
Notation for dentition in [Table 2B] (p. 117), where lower dentition is assumed the same as upper, is unchanged; for example "3, 1, 4, 3". In [Table 3] (p.118) it is given as a fraction, and represented in the etext as "upper/lower"; for example "44 = 3.1.4.3/3.1.4.3".
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. For example, manlike, man-like; paleozoic, palæozoic; to-day; unspiritual; instil.
[Pg 44], 'Christain sects' replaced by 'Christian sects'.
[Pg 53], '_Philosophie Zoologique_ (1899)' replaced by '_Philosophie Zoologique_ (1809)'.
[Pg 53], 'and the champanzee)' replaced by 'and the chimpanzee)'.
[Pg 72], 'familar tendency' replaced by 'familiar tendency'.
[Pg 88], 'acurately described' replaced by 'accurately described'.
[Pg 115], '5. Jurassic' replaced by '9. Jurassic'.
[Pg 123], 'irrational and inscientific' replaced by 'irrational and unscientific'.