[Enclosure]

Preface of the editor.

When I was asked to lead a new edition of the translation of Darwin’s book on the origin of species through the press I had first to complain that Bronn couldn’t do it himself any more. Now it was not only the piety owing to the dead which made it a duty for me to revise Bronn’s work, it was especially the conscience of deep obligation under which German Science stands to the late Bronn and which could not but be augmented by his introduction of the book on the origin of species to the public at large, that I welcomed the opportunity of continuing a task begun by him   My first aim could only be, to correct the errors and mistakes left unnoticed here and there, and above all to insert the many important additions of the author, which are to be found in the new english edition, into this German. Of these I may mention the detailed accounts of dimorphic and trimorphic plants and animals, of mimetic butterflies, of hybridism and the sterility and fertility of hybrids and first crosses, of means of transport and so on

A singular difficulty arose to me from the publisher’s wish to put my name on the title. As I acknowledge the great merits of Bronn’s heartily and without any reserve, yet here only his relation to the contents of the book edited by him could lead me. His position to Darwin’s theory is quite different of mine. Bronn declares in his concluding remarks, which he even joins to the text of the work as a 15. chapter, that “he was not able, to follow the doctrine” (put down in the preceding fourteen chapters) and that he thinks it “more consistant, to” insist upon the old point of view (viz. the admission of wonders), though it is not to be maintained scientifically.”

So also his foot-notes are mostly debating. Now, the more I should think it unfair to fight against Bronn’s opposing notes by polemising additions (which I shouldn’t have done even without giving my name) the less it seems to me advisable, to append explanations or notes betraying doubt to a work equally excellent in its richness of details as in the acuteness of its combinations, and this the less as the development of the science of organic nature within the last ten’s of years tends always more pressingly to a view which now Darwin has brought into such masterly form   Therefore in accordance with the author I decided, to leave out Bronn’s additions. I have also resisted the temptation to append notes of my own, though I might have been led to do it, for instance with regard to the value of zoological characters, to the causes of the variability, but especially with regard to the methodological necessity of the admission of the spontaneous generation I give therefore Darwin’s book so as it is in its fourth english edition published towards the close of the past year with some corrections sent me by the author. For those and for many lights on moot or doubtful points I feel myself most obliged to him.

J.V.C.