Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II 'WHAT IS A SPECIES?' The Presidential Address read at the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of London, January 20, 1904. Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Society, 1903, p. Ixxvii. Revised and modified': several paragraphs added and several rewritten: additional footnotes. The late Professor Max Miiller, in an eloquent speech delivered at Reading in 1891, spoke of the necessity of examining, and, as time passes by, re-examining the meaning of words. He referred as an illustration to the man at the railway station who taps the wheels with his hammer, testing whether each still rings true or has undergone some change that may mean disaster. In almost the same way, the speaker maintained, a word may slowly and unobtrusively change its meaning, becoming, unless critically tested to ascertain whether it still rings true, a danger instead of an aid to clear thinking, a pitfall on the field of controversy. He then went on to say, that Darwin had written a great work upon the Origin of Species, and had never once explained what he meant by the word Species. So decided an utterance—the statement was made emphatically—ought to have involved a careful and critical search through the pages of the work that was attacked. However this may be, it is quite certain that the search was unsuccessful ; and yet a few minutes' investigation brought me to a passage in which the meaning attached by the author to the term Species is set down in the clear, calm, and simple language which did so much to convince an unwilling world. Darwin is speaking of the revolution which the acceptance of his views will bring about. ' Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be i...