In 1826 Professor Grant, in the concluding paragraph in his well-known paper ( Edinburgh Philosophical Journal , vol. XIV , page 283) on the Spongilla, clearly declares his belief that species are descended from other species, and that they become improved in the course of modification. This same view was given in his Fifty-fifth Lecture, published in the Lancet in 1834 .

In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture , in which he gives precisely the same view on the origin of species as that (presently to be alluded to) propounded by Mr. Wallace and myself in the Linnean Journal , and as that enlarged in the present volume. Unfortunately the view was given by Mr. Matthew very briefly in scattered passages in an appendix to a work on a different subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew attention to it in the Gardeners’ Chronicle , on April 7, 1860 . The differences of Mr.