indicates their educational and social life. They were diligent students of nature and of nature's God. They studied the present state of existence. and prognosticated the future of existence in which all should dwell. Of botany, geology and astronomy they had considerable knowledge. Their acquaintance with flowers and their use in medicine were wonderful. Under the ground as on the surface they were at home, and in the art of mining proficient. On the continent as on the island they were famous for bringing the heart of the earth to the surface. The product of their mines went as far as Phoenicia, and beyond. In the study of the heavens they had made considerable proficiency. Without the aid of modern science or art, or even of Grecian or Roman learning, they could tell considerable of the stars and the solar system. As they committed nothing to writing it took, we are told, twenty years to commit

their mystic instruction to memory. Even nobles and princes came to the island from the continent to complete their education in the schools of the Druids. Their skill in the mechanic arts and the implements of war astonished even the Roman soldiers, and the great Caesar. Their war chariots and their skill in the management of them, on the hillside as on the plain, in turning a sharp corner as in a straight line, in driving through their enemies as over the open field, the master guiding the horses, and the servant leaping off, and on the chariot, to kill his man and save himself, appeared to the foes of the island wonderful. Their purity, honesty and conscientiousness were remarkable for the age in which they lived. Woman was not among the beasts of burden, but the companion of man. She was his other and better half, the sharer of his joys and sorrows.

were not led away by false conclusions drawn from the premises of God's power; they knew of facts in nature which unmistakably pointed to another theory of the upbuilding of this world; they knew of simple truths which suggested a continual, a gradual development of the physical world above and around us.

Bacon very happily states that there are only two ways of gaining knowledge, viz., anticipation and interpretation. The first was the way of the undeveloped and untutored, which was in Vogue through the ages; the second the way of the scientific mind, which during the last fifty years has revolutionized the world. The manner of the first is to observe a few general facts, and thereon hurry from the senses to the most general axions; the other process gathers multitudes of facts, arranges and classifies them, and thereby constructing by gradually ascending the scale of information. This is interpretation; that is speculation. The one loves facts and truths; the other revels in dreams and conjectures.

Those thinkers to whose minds the theory of evolution has been suggested, and who have followed this line of investigation during the three last centuries have been few and far between, solitary and unnoticed. They recorded their extraordinary ideas on the pages of books, which very few appreciated. Some of these thoughts were even unknown and unnoticed by their contemporaries, and even by their fel

low-philosophers. Lamarck labored for years in France in the interest of the theory of evolution utterly unknown to Goethe in Germany working for the same object. So it seems, that the principles of evolution were: spreading secretly, like roots, during all the years; in Darwin they sprang forth and blossomed in the sight of the thinking world. In the following remarks we shall state briefly the growth of the theory.

Bacon pointed out the evidence for variation, and the production of new species and the gradations of life. He had glimpses of the process of evolution, and had some conception of some of its principles. To Descartes the world was a mechanism explicable upon physical principles; but so overwhelming was the general opinion favorable to Special Creation that he wavered between the true order of things and the prevailing belief. Leibnitz believed in Continuity and Perfectibility. "All advances by degrees and not by leaps." According to him, nature has thought fit to remove the intermediate species, especially between Man and the Apes. Spinoza, Pascal, Newton and Hume saw the uniformity of nature. Hume concluded that the world was generated gradually, not made instantaneously. Emmanuel Kant believed all nature to be under the domain of natural causes that man belongs to the ranks of nature. He had noticed the agreement of SO many kinds of animals in a certain plan of structure. so that a wonderfully simple typical

form by a little change or development might be able to produce a numerous variety of species. We observed also "that this analogy of forms strengthens the supposition that they have an actual blood-relationship." Herder observed that similarities of external and internal structure pervade all the land animals, and are repeated in man. Different species of animals, amphibia, water animals, birds, fishes, are but varieties of the man type. "All the functions of life," he thought "are the diverse modifications of a single force."

Although these philosophers furnish statements of the general idea of evolution, they adduced hardly any evidence or proofs to substantiate or verify their conclusions. They were more the result of speculation than of investigation. Very little progress in physical science had been as yet made; so these were happy guesses or felicitous suppositions. Even a superficial observation of the ways of nature would have suggested the simple fact that nothing comes into existence abruptly, but gradually; and the construction of every part of nature betokens growth and a gradual upbuilding,

Although Diderot had very little evidence or array of natural facts to support his views, he had instinctively discovered the idea of evolution; and had formed in his mind a complete outline of the theory which scientists now adopt as the most rational process of creation.

He believed that "the seed of life is in inorganic matter; that by development it has acquired in succession movement, sensation, ideas, thought, reflection, conscience, emotions, gestures, articulation, language, laws, and finally arts and sciences; that millions of years have elapsed during each of these phases of development." Diderot also discussed "Natural Selection," and "The Survival of the Fittest." His labor was nevertheless, largely speculative.

Bonnet and Robinet, French naturalists, at the close of the last century had very advanced views of evolution, intermingled with conjectures which were mere fantasies. Bonnet works out Leibnitz' law of continuity into the idea that all creation is one continuous ascent of life from the lowest to the highest; not successive acts of special creations, but "a scale of absolutely unbroken individuals." This scale. is not broken by death. Robinet also denies all distinction between the organic and the inorganic. According to his view, nature has an aim or constant tendency towards perfection of each type; and he held that from the beginning her aim has been through countless ages, to produce Man.. From the simplest beginnings in life, she has by continuous changes through the operation of internal and external influences, reached the perfection of Man, which she will further improve into a higher and more perfect being.

fach tu hwnt i Gymry" the same as the rest of the Hwntws? Of all the various races that have gone to the making of the present inhabitants of Wales, whose temperament have we inherited?

Turn now to England. Dark people varying locally as do the dark people in Wales are found not only in the northern counties, in the Highlands of Scotland, Scotland, and in Devonshire, where they may be supposed to to have originated in much the same way, but we find them locally grouped in Norfolk and other parts of the eastern counties; and all along the coast we find the very same varieties of sandy-reddish or fair people as we see round the coast of Wales. There are more of the dark people in Wales and the west of England, more flaxen-haired people in some parts of eastern or central England; but the ancient races are all scattered about and mixed up so that no large area is occupied by any one nationality. To talk of separate nationalities among the mixed people who make up the population of the British Isles is to talk the most arrant nonsense.

Now let us turn to another point of view. Who are the inhabitants of Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, London and other large towns of England? How shall we form an opinion? Let us walk about and look at their faces. From that inFrom that inspection we should certainly not infer that they were very different from the inhabitants of Aberystwyth, Bangor, or Cardiff. Certainly they do not all belong to the fair type which

we are accustomed to call Saxon, and which we find represented in some of the inland counties of England. Let us next look at the names on the doors and over the shops. Here we find an enormous proportion of those patronymics with which we are so familiar in our own country. Wales for the Welsh indeed! The Welsh have gone forth and possessed England. The Welsh have great adaptability and versatility, and when they have trained themselves often by individual effort and late in life, they have shown great administrative and financial capacity. What was the burden of the song that has inspired the great and growing expansion of Germany? Was it Germany for the Germans? One of the most popular poems in Germany from about 1813 to 1870 was that written by the patriotic poet, E. M. Arndt, "Was ist das Deutschen Vaterland," "What is the Fatherland of the German?" In which he asks "Shall it be restricted to the geographical limits of mountain and valley, or the political boundaries of surrounding nations?" but

answers,

Oh no, oh no, that ne'er can be,

The German's home a wider range must

see.

Wherever there is work to be done and waste places of the earth to be reclaimed, where truthful and trusting men stand shoulder to shoulder in the battle of life, there the German finds himself at home. What a large view of life!

But what have we been brought up on what historical recollections,