ADDRESS TO DARWIN.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2410, 7 December 1880, Page 4

ADDRESS TO DARWIN.

The following address, which explains itself, has been forwarded to the author of “ The Origin of Species To Charles Darwin, Esq., M.A. LL.D., F.R.S., etc. Sir, —We, the members of the Council of the Otago Institute, beg to, offer our sincere congratulations on this the twenty-first anniversary of the publication of your great work “ The Origin of Species.” However limited the field of our own labors may be, we cannot but be sensible of the influence which that work has had throughout the whole domain of natural science, and especially upon biology, which, as one great comprehensive science, may be said to owe its very existence to the fact that you make belief in evolution possible by your theory of natural selection. We are glad to think that you have lived to see the almost universal acceptance of the great doctrine which it has been the work of your life to establish. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that every important botanical or zoological discovery of the last twenty-one years, particularly in the department of embryology and palaeontology, has tended to fill up some gap in the evidence you had originally collected, and to make evolution no longer a theory but an established doctrine of science. We hope that you may long live to continue your labors, and to see the further spread of their influence upon all scientific thought and upon all higher scientific work. Dunedin, New Zealand Oct. 1, 1880.