Me Forland. DARWINIANA: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS PERTAINING BY ASA GRAY, FISHER PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY (BOTANY) IN NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1, 8, AND 5 BOND STREET. 1889. Say QH 367 C. 2 ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by D. APPLETON & COMPANY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE. THESE papers are now collected at the request of friends and correspondents, who think that they may be useful; and two new essays are added. Most of the articles were written as occasion called for them within the past sixteen years, and contributed to various periodicals, with little thought of their forming a series, and none of ever bringing them together into a volume, although one of them (the third) was once reprinted in a pamphlet form. It is, therefore, inevitable that there should be considerable iteration in the argument, if not in the language. This could not be eliminated except by recasting the whole, which was neither practicable nor really desirable. It is better that they should record, as they do, the writer's freely-expressed thoughts upon the subject at the time; and to many readers there may be some advantage in going more than once, in different directions, over the same ground. If these essays were to be written now, some things might be differently expressed or qualified, but probably not so as |