40. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, June 10th, 1855…

40. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, June 10th, 1855

Shall you attend the Council of the Royal Society on Thursday next? I have not been very well of late, and I doubt whether I can attend; and if I could do anything (pray conceal the scandalous fact), I want to go to the Crystal Palace to meet the Horners, Lyells, and a party. So I want to know whether you will speak for me most strongly for Barrande. You know better than I do his admirable labours on the development of trilobites, and his most important work on his Lower or Primordial Zone. I enclose an old note of Lyell's to show what he thinks. With respect to Dana, whom I also proposed, you know well his merits. I can speak most highly of his classificatory work on crustacea and his Geographical Distribution. His Volcanic Geology is admirable, and he has done much good work on coral reefs.

If you attend, do not answer this; but if you cannot be at the Council, please inform me, and I suppose I must, if I can, attend.

Thank you for your abstract of your lecture at the Royal Institution, which interested me much, and rather grieved me, for I had hoped things had been in a slight degree otherwise. (40/1. "On certain Zoological Arguments commonly adduced in favour of the hypothesis of the Progressive Development of Animal Life," Discourse, Friday, April 20, 1855: "Proceedings R.I." (1855). Published also in "Huxley's Scientific Memoirs." The lecturer dwelt chiefly on the argument of Agassiz, which he summarises as follows: "Homocercal fishes have in their embryonic state heterocercal tails; therefore heterocercality is, so far, a mark of an embryonic state as compared with homocercality, and the earlier heterocercal fish are embryonic as compared with the later homocercal." He shows that facts do not support this view, and concludes generally "that there is no real parallel between the successive forms assumed in the development of the life of the individual at present and those which have appeared at different epochs in the past.") I heard some time ago that before long I might congratulate you on becoming a married man. (40/2. Mr. Huxley was married July 21st, 1855.) From my own experience of some fifteen years, I am very sure that there is nothing in this wide world which more deserves congratulation, and most sincerely and heartily do I congratulate you, and wish you many years of as much happiness as this world can afford.

41. TO J.D. HOOKER

(41/1. The following letter illustrates Darwin's work on aberrant genera. In the "Origin," Edition I., page 429, he wrote: "The more aberrant any form is, the greater must be the number of connecting forms which, on my theory, have been exterminated and utterly lost. And we have some evidence of aberrant forms having suffered severely from extinction, for they are generally represented by extremely few species; and such species as do occur are generally very distinct from each other, which again implies extinction.")

Down, November 15th [1855?].

In Schoenherr's Catalogue of Curculionidae (41/2. "Genera et Species Curculionidum." (C.J. Schoenherr: Paris, 1833-38.)), the 6,717 species are on an average 10.17 to a genus. Waterhouse (who knows the group well, and who has published on fewness of species in aberrant genera) has given me a list of 62 aberrant genera, and these have on an average 7.6 species; and if one single genus be removed (and which I cannot yet believe ought to be considered aberrant), then the 61 aberrant genera would have only 4.91 species on an average. I tested these results in another way. I found in Schoenherr 9 families, including only 11 genera, and these genera (9 of which were in Waterhouse's list) I found included only 3.36 species on an average.

This last result led me to Lindley's "Vegetable Kingdom," in which I found (excluding thallogens and acrogens) that the genera include each 10.46 species (how near by chance to the Curculionidae), and I find 21 orders including single genera, and these 21 genera have on average 7.95 species; but if Lindley is right that Erythroxylon (with its 75 species) ought to be amongst the Malpighiads, then the average would be only 4.6 per genus.

But here comes, as it appears to me, an odd thing (I hope I shall not quite weary you out). There are 29 other orders, each with 2 genera, and these 58 genera have on an average 15.07 species: this great number being owing to the 10 genera in the Smilaceae, Salicaceae (with 220 species), Begoniaceae, Balsaminaceae, Grossulariaceae, without which the remaining 48 genera have on an average only 5.91 species.

This case of the orders with only 2 genera, the genera notwithstanding having 15.07 species each, seems to me very perplexing and upsets, almost, the conclusion deducible from the orders with single genera.

I have gone higher, and tested the alliances with 1, 2, and 3 orders; and in these cases I find both the genera few in each alliance, and the species, less than the average of the whole kingdom, in each genus.

All this has amused me, but I daresay you will have a good sneer at me, and tell me to stick to my barnacles. By the way, you agree with me that sometimes one gets despondent--for instance, when theory and facts will not harmonise; but what appears to me even worse, and makes me despair, is, when I see from the same great class of facts, men like Barrande deduce conclusions, such as his "Colonies" (41/3. Lyell briefly refers to Barrande's Bohemian work in a letter (August 31st, 1856) to Fleming ("Life of Sir Charles Lyell," II., page 225): "He explained to me on the spot his remarkable discovery of a 'colony' of Upper Silurian fossils, 3,400 feet deep, in the midst of the Lower Silurian group. This has made a great noise, but I think I can explain away the supposed anomaly by, etc." (See Letter 40, Note.) and his agreement with E. de Beaumont's lines of Elevation, or such men as Forbes with his Polarity (41/4. Edward Forbes "On the Manifestation of Polarity in the Distribution of Organised Beings in Time" ("Edinburgh New Phil. Journal," Volume LVII., 1854, page 332). The author points out that "the maximum development of generic types during the Palaeozoic period was during its earlier epochs; that during the Neozoic period towards its later periods." Thus the two periods of activity are conceived to be at the two opposite poles of a sphere which in some way represents for him the system of Nature.); I have not a doubt that before many months are over I shall be longing for the most dishonest species as being more honest than the honestest theories. One remark more. If you feel any interest, or can get any one else to feel any interest on the aberrant genera question, I should think the most interesting way would be to take aberrant genera in any great natural family, and test the average number of species to the genera in that family.

How I wish we lived near each other! I should so like a talk with you on geographical distribution, taken in its greatest features. I have been trying from land productions to take a very general view of the world, and I should so like to see how far it agrees with plants.

42. TO MRS. LYELL

(42/1. Mrs. Lyell is a daughter of the late Mr. Leonard Horner, and widow of Lieut.-Col. Lyell, a brother of Sir Charles.)

Down, January 26th [1856].

I shall be very glad to be of any sort of use to you in regard to the beetles. But first let me thank you for your kind note and offer of specimens to my children. My boys are all butterfly hunters; and all young and ardent lepidopterists despise, from the bottom of their souls, coleopterists.

The simplest plan for your end and for the good of entomology, I should think, would be to offer the collection to Dr. J.E. Gray for the British Museum on condition that a perfect set was made out for you. If the collection was at all valuable, I should think he would be very glad to have this done. Whether any third set would be worth making out would depend on the value of the collection. I do not suppose that you expect the insects to be named, for that would be a most serious labour. If you do not approve of this scheme, I should think it very likely that Mr. Waterhouse would think it worth his while to set a series for you, retaining duplicates for himself; but I say this only on a venture. You might trust Mr. Waterhouse implicitly, which I fear, as [illegible] goes, is more than can be said for all entomologists. I presume, if you thought of either scheme, Sir Charles Lyell could easily see the gentlemen and arrange it; but, if not, I could do so when next I come to town, which, however, will not be for three or four weeks.

With respect to giving your children a taste for Natural History, I will venture one remark--viz., that giving them specimens in my opinion would tend to destroy such taste. Youngsters must be themselves collectors to acquire a taste; and if I had a collection of English lepidoptera, I would be systematically most miserly, and not give my boys half a dozen butterflies in the year. Your eldest has the brow of an observer, if there be the least truth in phrenology. We are all better, but we have been of late a poor household.

43. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1855]

I should have less scruple in troubling you if I had any confidence what my work would turn out. Sometimes I think it will be good, at other times I really feel as much ashamed of myself as the author of the "Vestiges" ought to be of himself. I know well that your kindness and friendship would make you do a great deal for me, but that is no reason that I should be unreasonable. I cannot and ought not to forget that all your time is employed in work certain to be valuable. It is superfluous in me to say that I enjoy exceedingly writing to you, and that your answers are of the greatest possible service to me. I return with many thanks the proof on Aquilegia (43/1. This seems to refer to the discussion on the genus Aquilegia in Hooker and Thomson's "Flora Indica," 1855, Volume I., Systematic Part, page 44. The authors' conclusion is that "all the European and many of the Siberian forms generally recognised belong to one very variable species." With regard to cirripedes, Mr. Darwin spoke of "certain just perceptible differences which blend together and constitute varieties and not species" ("Life and Letters," I., page 379).): it has interested me much. It is exactly like my barnacles; but for my particular purpose, most unfortunately, both Kolreuter and Gartner have worked chiefly on A. vulgaris and canadensis and atro-purpurea, and these are just the species that you seem not to have studied. N.B. Why do you not let me buy the Indian Flora? You are too magnificent.

Now for a short ride on my chief (at present) hobbyhorse, viz. aberrant genera. What you say under your remarks on Lepidodendron seems just the case that I want, to give some sort of evidence of what we both believe in, viz. how groups came to be anomalous or aberrant; and I think some sort of proof is required, for I do not believe very many naturalists would at all admit our view.

Thank you for the caution on large anomalous genera first catching attention. I do not quite agree with your "grave objection to the whole process," which is "that if you multiply the anomalous species by 100, and divide the normal by the same, you will then reverse the names..." For, to take an example, Ornithorhynchus and Echidna would not be less aberrant if each had a dozen (I do not say 100, because we have no such cases in the animal kingdom) species instead of one. What would really make these two genera less anomalous would be the creation of many genera and sub-families round and radiating from them on all sides. Thus if Australia were destroyed, Didelphys in S. America would be wonderfully anomalous (this is your case with Proteaceae), whereas now there are so many genera and little sub-families of Marsupiata that the group cannot be called aberrant or anomalous. Sagitta (and the earwig) is one of the most anomalous animals in the world, and not a bit the less because there are a dozen species. Now, my point (which, I think is a slightly new point of view) is, if it is extinction which has made the genus anomalous, as a general rule the same causes of extinction would allow the existence of only a few species in such genera. Whenever we meet (which will be on the 23rd [at the] Club) I shall much like to hear whether this strikes you as sound. I feel all the time on the borders of a circle of truism. Of course I could not think of such a request, but you might possibly:--if Bentham does not think the whole subject rubbish, ask him some time to pick out the dozen most anomalous genera in the Leguminosae, or any great order of which there is a monograph by which I could calculate the ordinary percentage of species to genera. I am the more anxious, as the more I enquire, the fewer are the cases in which it can be done. It cannot be done in birds, or, I fear, in mammifers. I doubt much whether in any other class of insects [other than Curculionidae].

I saw your nice notice of poor Forbes in the "Gardeners' Chronicle," and I see in the "Athenaeum" a notice of meeting on last Saturday of his friends. Of course I shall wish to subscribe as soon as possible to any memorial...

I have just been testing practically what disuse does in reducing parts. I have made [skeletons] of wild and tame duck (oh the smell of well-boiled, high duck!), and I find the tame duck ought, according to scale of wild prototype, to have its two wings 360 grains in weight; but it has only 317, or 43 grains too little, or 1/7 of [its] own two wings too little in weight. This seems rather interesting to me. (43/2. On the conclusions drawn from these researches, see Mr. Platt Ball, "The Effects of Use and Disuse" (Nature Series), 1890, page 55. With regard to his pigeons, Darwin wrote, in November 1855: "I love them to that extent that I cannot bear to kill and skeletonise them.")

P.S.--I do not know whether you will think this worth reading over. I have worked it out since writing my letter, and tabulate the whole.

21 orders with 1 genus, having 7.95 species (or 4.6?).

29 orders with 2 genera, having 15.05 species on an average.

23 orders each with 3 genera, and these genera include on an average 8.2 species.

20 orders each with 4 genera, and these genera include on an average 12.2 species.

27 orders each with above 50 genera (altogether 4716 genera), and these genera on an average have 9.97 species.

From this I conclude, whether there be many or few genera in an order, the number of species in a genus is not much affected; but perhaps when [there is] only one genus in an order it will be affected, and this will depend whether the [genus] Erythroxylon be made a family of.

44. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 8th [1856]

I have been particularly glad to get your splendid eloge of Lindley. His name had been lately passing through my head, and I had hoped that Miers would have proposed him for the Royal medal. I most entirely agree that the Copley (44/1. The late Professor Lindley never attained the honour of the Copley medal. The Royal medal was awarded to him in 1857.) is more appropriate, and I daresay he would not have valued the Royal. From skimming through many botanical books, and from often consulting the "Vegetable Kingdom," I had (ignorant as I am) formed the highest opinion of his claims as a botanist. If Sharpey will stick up strong for him, we should have some chance; but the natural sciences are but feebly represented in the Council. Sir P. Egerton, I daresay, would be strong for him. You know Bell is out. Now, my only doubt is, and I hope that you will consider this, that the natural sciences being weak on the Council, and (I fancy) the most powerful man in the Council, Col. S[abine], being strong against Lindley, whether we should have any chance of succeeding. It would be so easy to name some eminent man whose name would be well-known to all the physicists. Would Lindley hear of and dislike being proposed for the Copley and not succeeding? Would it not be better on this view to propose him for the Royal? Do think of this. Moreover, if Lindley is not proposed for the Royal, I fear both Royal medals would go [to] physicists; for I, for one, should not like to propose another zoologist, though Hancock would be a very good man, and I fancy there would be a feeling against medals to two botanists. But for whatever Lindley is proposed, I will do my best. We will talk this over here.

45. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 9th [1856]

...With respect to Huxley, I was on the point of speaking to Crawford and Strezlecki (who will be on Committee of the Athenaeum) when I bethought me of how Owen would look and what he would say. Cannot you fancy him, with slow and gentle voice, asking "Will Mr. Crawford tell me what Mr. Huxley has done, deserving this honour; I only know that he differs from, and disputes the authority of Cuvier, Ehrenberg, and Agassiz as of no weight at all." And when I began to tell Mr. Crawford what to say, I was puzzled, and could refer him only to some excellent papers in the "Phil. Trans." for which the medal had been awarded. But I doubt, with an opposing faction, whether this would be considered enough, for I believe real scientific merit is not thought enough, without the person is generally well known. Now I want to hear what you deliberately think on this head: it would be bad to get him proposed and then rejected; and Owen is very powerful.

46. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1856]

I have got the Lectures, and have read them. (46/1. The reference is presumably to the Royal Institution Lectures given in 1854-56. Those which we have seen--namely, those reprinted in the "Scientific Memoirs," Volume I.--"On the Common Plan of Animal Form," page 281; "On certain Zoological Arguments, etc." page 300; "On Natural History as Knowledge, Discipline, and Power," page 305, do not seem to us to contain anything likely to offend; but Falconer's attack in the "Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist." June 1856, on the last-named lecture, shows strong feeling. A reply by Mr. Huxley appeared in the July number of the same Journal. The most heretical discussion from a modern standpoint is at page 311, where he asks how it is conceivable that the bright colours of butterflies and shells or the elegant forms of Foraminifera can possibly be of service to their possessors; and it is this which especially struck Darwin, judging by the pencil notes on his copy of the Lecture.) Though I believe, as far as my knowledge goes, that Huxley is right, yet I think his tone very much too vehement, and I have ventured to say so in a note to Huxley. I had not thought of these lectures in relation to the Athenaeum (46/2. Mr. Huxley was in 1858 elected to the Athenaeum Club under Rule 2, which provides for the annual election of "a certain number of persons of distinguished eminence in science, literature, or the arts, or for public services."), but I am inclined quite to agree with you, and that we had better pause before anything is said...(N.B. I found Falconer very indignant at the manner in which Huxley treated Cuvier in his Royal Institution lectures; and I have gently told Huxley so.) I think we had better do nothing: to try in earnest to get a great naturalist into the Athenaeum and fail, is far worse than doing nothing.

How strange, funny, and disgraceful that nearly all (Faraday and Sir J. Herschel at least exceptions) our great men are in quarrels in couplets; it never struck me before...

47. C. LYELL TO CHARLES DARWIN

(47/1. In the "Life and Letters," II., page 72, is given a letter (June 16th, 1856) to Lyell, in which Darwin exhales his indignation over the "extensionists" who created continents ad libitum to suit the convenience of their theories. On page 74 a fuller statement of his views is given in a letter dated June 25th. We have not seen Lyell's reply to this, but his reply to Darwin's letter of June 16th is extant, and is here printed for the first time.)

53, Harley Street, London, June 17th, 1856.

I wonder you did not also mention D. Sharpe's paper (47/2. "On the Last Elevation of the Alps, etc." ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XII., 1856, page 102.), just published, by which the Alps were submerged as far as 9,000 feet of their present elevation above the sea in the Glacial period and then since uplifted again. Without admitting this, you would probably convey the alpine boulders to the Jura by marine currents, and if so, make the Alps and Jura islands in the glacial sea. And would not the Glacial theory, as now very generally understood, immerse as much of Europe as I did in my original map of Europe, when I simply expressed all the area which at some time or other had been under water since the commencement of the Eocene period? I almost suspect the glacial submergence would exceed it.

But would not this be a measure of the movement in every other area, northern (arctic), antarctic, or tropical, during an equal period--oceanic or continental? For the conversion of sea into land would always equal the turning of much land into sea.

But all this would be done in a fraction of the Pliocene period; the Glacial shells are barely 1 per cent. extinct species. Multiply this by the older Pliocene and Miocene epochs.

You also forget an author who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet, so that they all just rose to the surface at one level, or their sites are marked by buoys of coral. I could never feel sure whether he meant this tremendous catastrophe, all brought about by what Sedgwick called "Lyell's niggling operations," to have been effected during the era of existing species of corals. Perhaps you can tell me, for I am really curious to know...(47/3. The author referred to is of course Darwin.)

Now, although there is nothing in my works to warrant the building up of continents in the Atlantic and Pacific even since the Eocene period, yet, as some of the rocks in the central Alps are in part Eocene, I begin to think that all continents and oceans may be chiefly, if not all, post-Eocene, and Dana's "Atlantic Ocean" of the Lower Silurian is childish (see the Anniversary Address, 1856). (47/4. Probably Dana's Anniversary Address to the "American Association for the Advancement of Science," published in the "Proceedings" 1856.) But how far you are at liberty to call up continents from "the vasty deep" as often as you want to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods is a question; for the ocean is getting deeper of late, and Haughton says the mean depth is eleven miles! by his late paper on tides. (47/5. "On the Depth of the Sea deducible from Tidal Observations" ("Proc. Irish Acad." Volume VI., page 354, 1853-54).) I shall be surprised if this turns out true by soundings.

I thought your mind was expanding so much in regard to time that you would have been going ahead in regard to the possibility of mountain-chains being created in a fraction of the period required to convert a swan into a goose, or vice versa. Nine feet did the Rimutaka chain of New Zealand gain in height in January, 1855, and a great earthquake has occurred in New Zealand every seven years for half a century nearly. The "Washingtonia" (Californian conifer) (47/6. Washingtonia, or Wellingtonia, better known as Sequoia. Asa Gray, writing in 1872, states his belief that "no Sequoia now alive can sensibly antedate the Christian era" ("Scientific Papers," II., page 144).) lately exhibited was four thousand years old, so that one individual might see a chain of hills rise, and rise with it, much [more] a species--and those islands which J. Hooker describes as covered with New Zealand plants three hundred (?) miles to the N.E. (?) of New Zealand may have been separated from the mainland two or three or four generations of Washingtonia ago.

If the identity of the land-shells of all the hundreds of British Isles be owing to their having been united since the Glacial period, and the discordance, almost total, of the shells of Porto Santo and Madeira be owing to their having been separated [during] all the newer and possibly older Pliocene periods, then it gives us a conception of time which will aid you much in your conversion of species, if immensity of time will do all you require; for the Glacial period is thus shown, as we might have anticipated, to be contemptible in duration or in distance from us, as compared to the older Pliocene, let alone the Miocene, when our contemporary species were, though in a minority, already beginning to flourish.

The littoral shells, according to MacAndrew, imply that Madeira and the Canaries were once joined to the mainland of Europe or Africa, but that those isles were disjoined so long ago that most of the species came in since. In short, the marine shells tell the same story as the land shells. Why do the plants of Porto Santo and Madeira agree so nearly? And why do the shells which are the same as European or African species remain quite unaltered, like the Crag species, which returned unchanged to the British seas after being expelled from them by glacial cold, when two millions (?) of years had elapsed, and after such migration to milder seas? Be so good as to explain all this in your next letter.

48. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, July 5th [1856]

I write this morning in great tribulation about Tristan d'Acunha. (48/1. See "Flora Antarctica," page 216. Though Tristan d'Acunha is "only 1,000 miles distant from the Cape of Good Hope, and 3,000 from the Strait of Magalhaens, the botany of this island is far more intimately allied to that of Fuegia than Africa.") The more I reflect on your Antarctic flora the more I am astounded. You give all the facts so clearly and fully, that it is impossible to help speculating on the subject; but it drives me to despair, for I cannot gulp down your continent; and not being able to do so gives, in my eyes, the multiple creationists an awful triumph. It is a wondrous case, and how strange that A. De Candolle should have ignored it; which he certainly has, as it seems to me. I wrote Lyell a long geological letter (48/2. "Life and Letters," II., page 74.) about continents, and I have had a very long and interesting answer; but I cannot in the least gather his opinion about all your continental extensionists; and I have written again beseeching a verdict. (48/3. In the tenth edition of the "Principles," 1872, Lyell added a chapter (Chapter XLI., page 406) on insular floras and faunas in relation to the origin of species; he here (page 410) gives his reasons against Forbes as an extensionist.) I asked him to send to you my letter, for as it was well copied it would not be troublesome to read; but whether worth reading I really do not know; I have given in it the reasons which make me strongly opposed to continental extensions.

I was very glad to get your note some days ago: I wish you would think it worth while, as you intend to have the Laburnum case translated, to write to "Wien" (that unknown place) (48/4. There is a tradition that Darwin once asked Hooker where "this place Wien is, where they publish so many books."), and find out how the Laburnum has been behaving: it really ought to be known.

The Entada is a beast. (48/5. The large seeds of Entada scandens are occasionally floated across the Atlantic and cast on the shores of Europe.); I have never differed from you about the growth of a plant in a new island being a FAR harder trial than transportal, though certainly that seems hard enough. Indeed I suspect I go even further than you in this respect; but it is too long a story.

Thank you for the Aristolochia and Viscum cases: what species were they? I ask, because oddly these two very genera I have seen advanced as instances (I forget at present by whom, but by good men) in which the agency of insects was absolutely necessary for impregnation. In our British dioecious Viscum I suppose it must be necessary. Was there anything to show that the stigma was ready for pollen in these two cases? for it seems that there are many cases in which pollen is shed long before the stigma is ready. As in our Viscum, insects carry, sufficiently regularly for impregnation, pollen from flower to flower, I should think that there must be occasional crosses even in an hermaphrodite Viscum. I have never heard of bees and butterflies, only moths, producing fertile eggs without copulation.

With respect to the Ray Society, I profited so enormously by its publishing my Cirrepedia, that I cannot quite agree with you on confining it to translations; I know not how else I could possibly have published.

I have just sent in my name for 20 pounds to the Linnaean Society, but I must confess I have done it with heavy groans, whereas I daresay you gave your 20 pounds like a light-hearted gentleman...

P.S. Wollaston speaks strongly about the intermediate grade between two varieties in insects and mollusca being often rarer than the two varieties themselves. This is obviously very important for me, and not easy to explain. I believe I have had cases from you. But, if you believe in this, I wish you would give me a sentence to quote from you on this head. There must, I think, be a good deal of truth in it; otherwise there could hardly be nearly distinct varieties under any species, for we should have instead a blending series, as in brambles and willows.

49. TO J.D. HOOKER. July 13th, 1856

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature! With respect to crossing, from one sentence in your letter I think you misunderstand me. I am very far from believing in hybrids: only in crossing of the same species or of close varieties. These two or three last days I have been observing wheat, and have convinced myself that L. Deslongchamps is in error about impregnation taking place in closed flowers; i.e., of course, I can judge only from external appearances. By the way, R. Brown once told me that the use of the brush on stigma of grasses was unknown. Do you know its use?...

You say most truly about multiple creations and my notions. If any one case could be proved, I should be smashed; but as I am writing my book, I try to take as much pains as possible to give the strongest cases opposed to me, and often such conjectures as occur to me. I have been working your books as the richest (and vilest) mine against me; and what hard work I have had to get up your New Zealand Flora! As I have to quote you so often, I should like to refer to Muller's case of the Australian Alps. Where is it published? Is it a book? A correct reference would be enough for me, though it is wrong even to quote without looking oneself. I should like to see very much Forbes's sheets, which you refer to; but I must confess (I hardly know why) I have got rather to mistrust poor dear Forbes.

There is wonderful ill logic in his famous and admirable memoir on distribution, as it appears to me, now that I have got it up so as to give the heads in a page. Depend on it, my saying is a true one--viz. that a compiler is a great man, and an original man a commonplace man. Any fool can generalise and speculate; but oh, my heavens, to get up at second hand a New Zealand Flora, that is work...

And now I am going to beg almost as great a favour as a man can beg of another: and I ask some five or six weeks before I want the favour done, that it may appear less horrid. It is to read, but well copied out, my pages (about forty!!) on Alpine floras and faunas, Arctic and Antarctic floras and faunas, and the supposed cold mundane period. It would be really an enormous advantage to me, as I am sure otherwise to make botanical blunders. I would specify the few points on which I most want your advice. But it is quite likely that you may object on the ground that you might be publishing before me (I hope to publish in a year at furthest), so that it would hamper and bother you; and secondly you may object to the loss of time, for I daresay it would take an hour and a half to read. It certainly would be of immense advantage to me; but of course you must not think of doing it if it would interfere with your own work.

I do not consider this request in futuro as breaking my promise to give no more trouble for some time.

From Lyell's letters, he is coming round at a railway pace on the mutability of species, and authorises me to put some sentences on this head in my preface.

I shall meet Lyell on Wednesday at Lord Stanhope's, and will ask him to forward my letter to you; though, as my arguments have not struck him, they cannot have force, and my head must be crotchety on the subject; but the crotchets keep firmly there. I have given your opinion on continuous land, I see, too strongly.

50. TO S.P. WOODWARD. Down, July 18th [1856]

Very many thanks for your kindness in writing to me at such length, and I am glad to say for your sake that I do not see that I shall have to beg any further favours. What a range and what a variability in the Cyrena! (50/1. A genus of Lamellibranchs ranging from the Lias to the present day.) Your list of the ranges of the land and fresh-water shells certainly is most striking and curious, and especially as the antiquity of four of them is so clearly shown.

I have got Harvey's seaside book, and liked it; I was not particularly struck with it, but I will re-read the first and last chapters.

I am growing as bad as the worst about species, and hardly have a vestige of belief in the permanence of species left in me; and this confession will make you think very lightly of me, but I cannot help it. Such has become my honest conviction, though the difficulties and arguments against such heresy are certainly most weighty.

51. TO C. LYELL. November 10th [1856]

I know you like all cases of negative geological evidence being upset. I fancied that I was a most unwilling believer in negative evidence; but yet such negative evidence did seem to me so strong that in my "Fossil Lepadidae" I have stated, giving reasons, that I did not believe there could have existed any sessile cirripedes during the Secondary ages. Now, the other day Bosquet of Maestricht sends me a perfect drawing of a perfect Chthamalus (a recent genus) from the Chalk! (51/1. Chthamalus, a genus of Cirripedia. ("A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia," by Charles Darwin, page 447. London, 1854.) A fossil species of this genus of Upper Cretaceous age was named by Bosquet Chthamalus Darwini. See "Origin," Edition VI., page 284; also Zittel, "Traite de Paleontologie," Traduit par Dr. C. Barrois, Volume II., page 540, figure 748. Paris, 1887.) Indeed, it is stretching a point to make it specifically distinct from our living British species. It is a genus not hitherto found in any Tertiary bed.

52. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, July 9th, 1857

I am extremely much obliged to you for having so fully entered on my point. I knew I was on unsafe ground, but it proves far unsafer than I had thought. I had thought that Brulle (52/1. This no doubt refers to A. Brulle's paper in the "Comptes rendus" 1844, of which a translation is given in the "Annals and Mag. of Natural History," 1844, page 484. In speaking of the development of the Articulata, the author says "that the appendages are manifested at an earlier period of the existence of an Articulate animal the more complex its degree of organisation, and vice versa that they make their appearance the later, the fewer the number of transformations which it has to undergo.") had a wider basis for his generalisation, for I made the extract several years ago, and I presume (I state it as some excuse for myself) that I doubted it, for, differently from my general habit, I have not extracted his grounds. It was meeting with Barneoud's paper which made me think there might be truth in the doctrine. (52/2. Apparently Barneoud "On the Organogeny of Irregular Corollas," from the "Comptes rendus," 1847, as given in "Annals and Mag. of Natural History," 1847, page 440. The paper chiefly deals with the fact that in their earliest condition irregular flowers are regular. The view attributed to Barneoud does not seem so definitely given in this paper as in a previous one ("Ann. Sc. Nat." Bot., Tom. VI., page 268.) Your instance of heart and brain of fish seems to me very good. It was a very stupid blunder on my part not thinking of the posterior part of the time of development. I shall, of course, not allude to this subject, which I rather grieve about, as I wished it to be true; but, alas! a scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections--a mere heart of stone.

There is only one point in your letter which at present I cannot quite follow you in: supposing that Barneoud's (I do not say Brulle's) remarks were true and universal--i.e., that the petals which have to undergo the greatest amount of development and modification begin to change the soonest from the simple and common embryonic form of the petal--if this were a true law, then I cannot but think that it would throw light on Milne Edwards' proposition that the wider apart the classes of animals are, the sooner do they diverge from the common embryonic plan--which common embryonic [plan] may be compared with the similar petals in the early bud, the several petals in one flower being compared to the distinct but similar embryos of the different classes. I much wish that you would so far keep this in mind, that whenever we meet I might hear how far you differ or concur in this. I have always looked at Barneoud's and Brulle's proposition as only in some degree analogous.

P.S. I see in my abstract of Milne Edwards' paper, he speaks of "the most perfect and important organs" as being first developed, and I should have thought that this was usually synonymous with the most developed or modified.

53. TO J.D. HOOKER

(53/1. The following letter is chiefly of interest as showing the amount and kind of work required for Darwin's conclusions on "large genera varying," which occupy no more than two or three pages in the "Origin" (Edition I., page 55). Some correspondence on the subject is given in the "Life and Letters," II., pages 102-5.)

Down, August 22nd [1857].

Your handwriting always rejoices the cockles of my heart; though you have no reason to be "overwhelmed with shame," as I did not expect to hear.

I write now chiefly to know whether you can tell me how to write to Hermann Schlagenheit (is this spelt right?) (53/2. Schlagintweit.), for I believe he is returned to England, and he has poultry skins for me from W. Elliot of Madras.

I am very glad to hear that you have been tabulating some Floras about varieties. Will you just tell me roughly the result? Do you not find it takes much time? I am employing a laboriously careful schoolmaster, who does the tabulating and dividing into two great cohorts, more carefully than I can. This being so, I should be very glad some time to have Koch, Webb's Canaries, and Ledebour, and Grisebach, but I do not know even where Rumelia is. I shall work the British flora with three separate Floras; and I intend dividing the varieties into two classes, as Asa Gray and Henslow give the materials, and, further, A. Gray and H.C. Watson have marked for me the forms, which they consider real species, but yet are very close to others; and it will be curious to compare results. If it will all hold good it is very important for me; for it explains, as I think, all classification, i.e. the quasi-branching and sub-branching of forms, as if from one root, big genera increasing and splitting up, etc., as you will perceive. But then comes in, also, what I call a principle of divergence, which I think I can explain, but which is too long, and perhaps you would not care to hear. As you have been on this subject, you might like to hear what very little is complete (for my schoolmaster has had three weeks' holidays)--only three cases as yet, I see.

BABINGTON--British Flora.

593 species in genera of 5 and 593 (odd chance equal) in upwards have in a thousand genera of 3 and downwards have species presenting vars. in a thousand presenting vars. 134/1000.* 37/1000.

(*53/3. This sentence may be interpreted as follows: The number of species which present varieties are 134 per thousand in genera of 5 species and upwards. The result is obtained from tabulation of 593 species.)

HOOKER--New Zealand.

Genera with 4 species and With 3 species and downwards upwards, 150/1000. 114/1000.

GODRON--Central France.

With 5 species and upwards With 3 species and downwards 160/1000. 105/1000.

I do not enter into details on omitting introduced plants and very varying genera, as Rubus, Salix, Rosa, etc., which would make the result more in favour.

I enjoyed seeing Henslow extremely, though I was a good way from well at the time. Farewell, my dear Hooker: do not forget your visit here some time.

54. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 14th [1857]

On Tuesday I will send off from London, whither I go on that day, Ledebour's three remaining volumes, Grisebach and Cybele, i.e., all that I have, and most truly am I obliged to you for them. I find the rule, as yet, of the species varying most in the large genera universal, except in Miquel's very brief and therefore imperfect list of the Holland flora, which makes me very anxious to tabulate a fuller flora of Holland. I shall remain in London till Friday morning, and if quite convenient to send me two volumes of D.C. Prodromus, I could take them home and tabulate them. I should think a volume with a large best known natural family, and a volume with several small broken families would be best, always supposing that the varieties are conspicuously marked in both. Have you the volume published by Lowe on Madeira? If so and if any varieties are marked I should much like to see it, to see if I can make out anything about habitats of vars. in so small an area--a point on which I have become very curious. I fear there is no chance of your possessing Forbes and Hancock "British Shells," a grand work, which I much wish to tabulate.

Very many thanks for seed of Adlumia cirrhosa, which I will carefully observe. My notice in the G. Ch. on Kidney Beans (54.1 "On the Agency of Bees in the Fertilisation of Papilionaceous Flowers" ("Gardeners' Chronicle," 1857, page 725).) has brought me a curious letter from an intelligent gardener, with a most remarkable lot of beans, crossed in a marvellous manner IN THE FIRST GENERATION, like the peas sent to you by Berkeley and like those experimentalised on by Gartner and by Wiegmann. It is a very odd case; I shall sow these seeds and see what comes up. How very odd that pollen of one form should affect the outer coats and size of the bean produced by pure species!...

55. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1857?]

You know how I work subjects: namely, if I stumble on any general remark, and if I find it confirmed in any other very distinct class, then I try to find out whether it is true,--if it has any bearing on my work. The following, perhaps, may be important to me. Dr. Wight remarks that Cucurbitaceae (55/1. Wight, "Remarks on the Fruit of the Natural Order Cucurbitaceae" ("Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist." VIII., page 261). R. Wight, F.R.S. (1796-1872) was Superintendent of the Madras Botanic Garden.) is a very isolated family, and has very diverging affinities. I find, strongly put and illustrated, the very same remark in the genera of hymenoptera. Now, it is not to me at first apparent why a very distinct and isolated group should be apt to have more divergent affinities than a less isolated group. I am aware that most genera have more affinities than in two ways, which latter, perhaps, is the commonest case. I see how infinitely vague all this is; but I should very much like to know what you and Mr. Bentham (if he will read this), who have attended so much to the principles of classification, think of this. Perhaps the best way would be to think of half a dozen most isolated groups of plants, and then consider whether the affinities point in an unusual number of directions. Very likely you may think the whole question too vague to be worth consideration.

56. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 8th [1857]

I now want to ask your opinion, and for facts on a point; and as I shall often want to do this during the next year or two, so let me say, once for all, that you must not take trouble out of mere good nature (of which towards me you have a most abundant stock), but you must consider, in regard to the trouble any question may take, whether you think it worth while--as all loss of time so far lessens your original work--to give me facts to be quoted on your authority in my work. Do not think I shall be disappointed if you cannot spare time; for already I have profited enormously from your judgment and knowledge. I earnestly beg you to act as I suggest, and not take trouble solely out of good-nature.

My point is as follows: Harvey gives the case of Fucus varying remarkably, and yet in same way under most different conditions. D. Don makes same remark in regard to Juncus bufonius in England and India. Polygala vulgaris has white, red, and blue flowers in Faroe, England, and I think Herbert says in Zante. Now such cases seem to me very striking, as showing how little relation some variations have to climatal conditions.

Do you think there are many such cases? Does Oxalis corniculata present exactly the same varieties under very different climates?

How is it with any other British plants in New Zealand, or at the foot of the Himalaya? Will you think over this and let me hear the result?

One other question: do you remember whether the introduced Sonchus in New Zealand was less, equally, or more common than the aboriginal stock of the same species, where both occurred together? I forget whether there is any other case parallel with this curious one of the Sonchus...

I have been making good, though slow, progress with my book, for facts have been falling nicely into groups, enlightening each other.

57. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Moor Park, Farnham, Surrey [1857?]

Your letter has been forwarded to me here, where I am profiting by a few weeks' rest and hydropathy. Your letter has interested and amused me much. I am extremely glad you have taken up the Aphis (57/1. Professor Huxley's paper on the organic reproduction of Aphis is in the "Trans. Linn. Soc." XXII. (1858), page 193. Prof. Owen had treated the subject in his introductory Hunterian lecture "On Parthenogenesis" (1849). His theory cannot be fully given here. Briefly, he holds that parthenogenesis is due to the inheritance of a "remnant of spermatic virtue": when the "spermatic force" or "virtue" is exhausted fresh impregnation occurs. Huxley severely criticises both Owen's facts and his theory.) question, but, for Heaven's sake, do not come the mild Hindoo (whatever he may be) to Owen; your father confessor trembles for you. I fancy Owen thinks much of this doctrine of his; I never from the first believed it, and I cannot but think that the same power is concerned in producing aphides without fertilisation, and producing, for instance, nails on the amputated stump of a man's fingers, or the new tail of a lizard. By the way, I saw somewhere during the last week or so a statement of a man rearing from the same set of eggs winged and wingless aphides, which seemed new to me. Does not some Yankee say that the American viviparous aphides are winged? I am particularly glad that you are ruminating on the act of fertilisation: it has long seemed to me the most wonderful and curious of physiological problems. I have often and often speculated for amusement on the subject, but quite fruitlessly. Do you not think that the conjugation of the Diatomaceae will ultimately throw light on the subject? But the other day I came to the conclusion that some day we shall have cases of young being produced from spermatozoa or pollen without an ovule. Approaching the subject from the side which attracts me most, viz., inheritance, I have lately been inclined to speculate, very crudely and indistinctly, that propagation by true fertilisation will turn out to be a sort of mixture, and not true fusion, of two distinct individuals, or rather of innumerable individuals, as each parent has its parents and ancestors. I can understand on no other view the way in which crossed forms go back to so large an extent to ancestral forms. But all this, of course, is infinitely crude. I hope to be in London in the course of this month, and there are two or three points which, for my own sake, I want to discuss briefly with you.

58. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, September 26th [1857]

Thanks for your very pleasant note. It amuses me to see what a bug-bear I have made myself to you; when having written some very pungent and good sentence it must be very disagreeable to have my face rise up like an ugly ghost. (58/1. This probably refers to Darwin's wish to moderate a certain pugnacity in Huxley.) I have always suspected Agassiz of superficiality and wretched reasoning powers; but I think such men do immense good in their way. See how he stirred up all Europe about glaciers. By the way, Lyell has been at the glaciers, or rather their effects, and seems to have done good work in testing and judging what others have done...

In regard to classification and all the endless disputes about the "Natural System," which no two authors define in the same way, I believe it ought, in accordance to my heterodox notions, to be simply genealogical. But as we have no written pedigrees you will, perhaps, say this will not help much; but I think it ultimately will, whenever heterodoxy becomes orthodoxy, for it will clear away an immense amount of rubbish about the value of characters, and will make the difference between analogy and homology clear. The time will come, I believe, though I shall not live to see it, when we shall have very fairly true genealogical trees of each great kingdom of Nature.

59. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, December 16th [1857]

In my opinion your Catalogue (59/1. It appears from a letter to Sir J.D. Hooker (December 25th, 1857) that the reference is to the proofs of Huxley's "Explanatory Preface to the Catalogue of the Palaeontological Collection in the Museum of Practical Geology," by T.H. Huxley and R. Etheridge, 1865. Mr. Huxley appends a note at page xlix: "It should be noted that these pages were written before the appearance of Mr. Darwin's book on 'The Origin of Species'--a work which has effected a revolution in biological speculation.") is simply the very best resume, by far, on the whole science of Natural History, which I have ever seen. I really have no criticisms: I agree with every word. Your metaphors and explanations strike me as admirable. In many parts it is curious how what you have written agrees with what I have been writing, only with the melancholy difference for me that you put everything in twice as striking a manner as I do. I append, more for the sake of showing that I have attended to the whole than for any other object, a few most trivial criticisms.

I was amused to meet with some of the arguments, which you advanced in talk with me, on classification; and it pleases me, [that] my long proses were so far not thrown away, as they led you to bring out here some good sentences. But on classification (59/2. This probably refers to Mr. Huxley's discussion on "Natural Classification," a subject hardly susceptible of fruitful treatment except from an evolutionary standpoint.) I am not quite sure that I yet wholly go with you, though I agree with every word you have here said. The whole, I repeat, in my opinion is admirable and excellent.

60. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, February 28th [1858]

Hearty thanks for De Candolle received. I have put the big genera in hand. Also many thanks for your valuable remarks on the affinities of the species in great genera, which will be of much use to me in my chapter on classification. Your opinion is what I had expected from what little I knew, but I much wanted it confirmed, and many of your remarks were more or less new to me and all of value.

You give a poor picture of the philosophy of Botany. From my ignorance, I suppose, I can hardly persuade myself that things are quite as bad as you make them,--you might have been writing remarks on Ornithology! I shall meditate much on your remarks, which will also come in very useful when I write and consider my tables of big and small genera. I grieve for myself to say that Watson agrees with your view, but with much doubt. I gave him no guide what your opinion was. I have written to A. Gray and to X., who--i.e. the latter--on this point may be looked at as S. Smith's Foolometer.

I am now working several of the large local Floras, with leaving out altogether all the smallest genera. When I have done this, and seen what the sections of the largest genera say, and seen what the results are of range and commonness of varying species, I must come to some definite conclusion whether or not entirely to give up the ghost. I shall then show how my theory points, how the facts stand, then state the nature of your grievous assault and yield entirely or defend the case as far as I can honestly.

Again I thank you for your invaluable assistance. I have not felt the blow [Hooker's criticisms] so much of late, as I have been beyond measure interested on the constructive instinct of the hive-bee. Adios, you terrible worrier of poor theorists!

61. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1858?]

Many thanks for Ledebour and still more for your letter, with its admirable resume of all your objections. It is really most kind of you to take so very much trouble about what seems to you, and probably is, mere vagaries.

I will earnestly try and be cautious. I will write out my tables and conclusion, and (when well copied out) I hope you will be so kind as to read it. I will then put it by and after some months look at it with fresh eyes. I will briefly work in all your objections and Watson's. I labour under a great difficulty from feeling sure that, with what very little systematic work I have done, small genera were more interesting and therefore more attracted my attention.

One of your remarks I do not see the bearing of under your point of view--namely, that in monotypic genera "the variation and variability" are "much more frequently noticed" than in polytypic genera. I hardly like to ask, but this is the only one of your arguments of which I do not see the bearing; and I certainly should be very glad to know. I believe I am the slowest (perhaps the worst) thinker in England; and I now consequently fully admit the full hostility of Urticaceae, which I will give in my tables.

I will make no remarks on your objections, as I do hope you will read my MS., which will not cost you much trouble when fairly copied out. From my own experience, I hardly believe that the most sagacious observers, without counting, could have predicted whether there were more or fewer recorded varieties in large or small genera; for I found, when actually making the list, that I could never strike a balance in my mind,--a good many varieties occurring together, in small or in large genera, always threw me off the balance...

P.S.--I have just thought that your remark about the much variation of monotypic genera was to show me that even in these, the smallest genera, there was much variability. If this be so, then do not answer; and I will so understand it.

62. TO J.D. HOOKER. February 23rd [1858]

Will you think of some of the largest genera with which you are well acquainted, and then suppose 4/5 of the species utterly destroyed and unknown in the sections (as it were) as much as possible in the centre of such great genera. Then would the remaining 1/5 of the species, forming a few sections, be, according to the general practice of average good Botanists, ranked as distinct genera? Of course they would in that case be closely related genera. The question, in fact, is, are all the species in a gigantic genus kept together in that genus, because they are really so very closely similar as to be inseparable? or is it because no chasms or boundaries can be drawn separating the many species? The question might have been put for Orders.

63. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, February 9th [1858]

I should be very much obliged for your opinion on the enclosed. You may remember in the three first volumes tabulated, all orders went right except Labiatae. By the way, if by any extraordinary chance you have not thrown away the scrap of paper with former results, I wish you would return it, for I have lost my copy, and I shall have all the division to do again; but DO NOT hunt for it, for in any case I should have gone over the calculation again.

Now I have done the three other volumes. You will see that all species in the six volumes together go right, and likewise all orders in the three last volumes, except Verbenaceae. Is not Verbenaceae very closely allied to Labiatae? If so, one would think that it was not mere chance, this coincidence. The species in Labiatae and Verbenaceae together are between 1/5 and 1/6 of all the species (15,645), which I have now tabulated.

Now, bearing in mind the many local Floras which I have tabulated (belting the whole northern hemisphere), and considering that they (and authors of D.C. Prodromus) would probably take different degrees of care in recording varieties, and the genera would be divided on different principles by different men, etc., I am much surprised at the uniformity of the result, and I am satisfied that there must be truth in the rule that the small genera vary less than the large. What do you think? Hypothetically I can conjecture how the Labiatae might fail--namely, if some small divisions of the Order were now coming into importance in the world and varying much and making species. This makes me want to know whether you could divide the Labiatae into a few great natural divisions, and then I would tabulate them separately as sub-orders. I see Lindley makes so many divisions that there would not be enough in each for an average. I send the table of the Labiatae for the chance of your being able to do this for me. You might draw oblique lines including and separating both large and small genera. I have also divided all the species into two equal masses, and my rule holds good for all the species in a mass in the six volumes; but it fails in several (four) large Orders--viz. Labiatae, Scrophulariaceae, Acanthaceae, and Proteaceae. But, then, when the species are divided into two almost exactly equal divisions, the divisions with large genera are so very few: for instance, in Solanaceae, Solanum balances all others. In Labiatae seven gigantic genera balance all others (viz. 113), and in Proteaceae five genera balance all others. Now, according to my hypothetical notions, I am far from supposing that all genera go on increasing forever, and therefore I am not surprised at this result, when the division is so made that only a very few genera are on one side. But, according to my notions, the sections or sub-genera of the gigantic genera ought to obey my rule (i.e., supposing a gigantic genus had come to its maximum, whatever increase was still going on ought to be going on in the larger sub-genera). Do you think that the sections of the gigantic genera in D.C. Prodromus are generally NATURAL: i.e. not founded on mere artificial characters? If you think that they are generally made as natural as they can be, then I should like very much to tabulate the sub-genera, considering them for the time as good genera. In this case, and if you do not think me unreasonable to ask it, I should be very glad of the loan of Volumes X., XI., XII., and XIV., which include Acanthaceae, Scrophulariaceae, Labiatae, and Proteaceae,--that is, the orders which, when divided quite equally, do not accord with my rule, and in which a very few genera balance all the others.

I have written you a tremendous long prose.

64. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, June 8th [1858]

I am confined to the sofa with boils, so you must let me write in pencil. You would laugh if you could know how much your note pleased me. I had the firmest conviction that you would say all my MS. was bosh, and thank God, you are one of the few men who dare speak the truth. Though I should not have much cared about throwing away what you have seen, yet I have been forced to confess to myself that all was much alike, and if you condemned that you would condemn all my life's work, and that I confess made me a little low; but I could have borne it, for I have the conviction that I have honestly done my best. The discussion comes in at the end of the long chapter on variation in a state of nature, so that I have discussed, as far as I am able, what to call varieties. I will try to leave out all allusion to genera coming in and out in this part, till when I discuss the "Principle of Divergence," which, with "Natural Selection," is the keystone of my book; and I have very great confidence it is sound. I would have this discussion copied out, if I could really think it would not bore you to read,--for, believe me, I value to the full every word of criticism from you, and the advantage which I have derived from you cannot be told...

I am glad to hear that poor old Brown is dying so easily...

You will think it paltry, but as I was asked to pay for printing the Diploma [from a Society of which he had been made an honorary member], I did not like to refuse, so I send 1 pound. But I think it a shabby proceeding. If a gentleman did me some service, though unasked to do it, and then demanded payment, I should pay him, and think him a shabby dog; and on this principle I send my 1 pound.

(65/1. The following four letters refer to an inquiry instituted in 1858 by the Trustees of the British Museum as to the disposal of the Natural History Collections. The inquiry was one of the first steps towards the establishment of the Cromwell Road Museum, which was effected in 1875.)

65. TO R.I. MURCHISON. Down, June 19th [1858]

I have just received your note. Unfortunately I cannot attend at the British Museum on Monday. I do not suppose my opinion on the subject of your note can be of any value, as I have not much considered the subject, or had the advantage of discussing it with other naturalists. But my impression is, that there is much weight in what you say about not breaking up the natural history collection of the British Museum. I think a national collection ought to be in London. I can, however, see that some weighty arguments might be advanced in favour of Kew, owing to the immense value of Sir W. Hooker's collection and library; but these are private property, and I am not aware that there is any certainty of their always remaining at Kew. Had this been the case, I should have thought that the botanical collection might have been removed there without endangering the other branches of the collections. But I think it would be the greatest evil which could possibly happen to natural science in this country if the other collections were ever to be removed from the British Museum and Library.

66. TO T.H. HUXLEY

(66/1. The memorial referred to in the following letter was addressed on November 18th to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was signed by Huxley, Bentham, W.H. Harvey, Henfrey, Henslow, Lindley, Busk, Carpenter, and Darwin. The memorial, which is accessible, as published in the "Gardeners' Chronicle," November 27th, 1858, page 861, recommended, speaking generally, the consolidation of the National Botanical collections at Kew.

In February, 1900, a Committee was appointed by the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury "to consider the present arrangements under which botanical work is done and collections maintained by the Trustees of the British Museum, and under the First Commissioner of Works at Kew, respectively; and to report what changes (if any) in those arrangements are necessary or desirable in order to avoid duplication of work and collections at the two institutions." The Committee published their report in March, 1901, recommending an arrangement similar to that proposed in 1858.)

Down, October 23rd [1858].

The names which you give as supporting your memorial make me quite distrust my own judgment; but, as I must say yea or nay, I am forced to say that I doubt the wisdom of the movement, and am not willing at present to sign. My reasons, perhaps of very little value, are as follows. The governing classes are thoroughly unscientific, and the men of art and of archaeology have much greater weight with Government than we have. If we make a move to separate from the British Museum, I cannot but fear that we may go to the dogs. I think we owe our position in large part to the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the British Museum, attracted by the heterogeneous mixture of objects. If we lost this support, as I think we should--for a mere collection of animals does not seem very attractive to the masses (judging from the Museum of the Zoological Society, formerly in Leicester Square)--then I do not think we should get nearly so much aid from Government. Therefore I should be inclined to stick to the mummies and Assyrian gods as long as we could. If we knew that Government was going to turn us out, then, and not till then, I should be inclined to make an energetic move. If we were to separate, I do not believe that we should have funds granted for the many books required for occasional reference: each man must speak from his own experience. I have so repeatedly required to see old Transactions and old Travels, etc., that I should regret extremely, when at work at the British Museum, to be separated from the entire library. The facilities for working at certain great classes--as birds, large fossils, etc.--are no doubt as bad as possible, or rather impossible, on the open days; but I have found the working rooms of the Assistants very convenient for all other classes on all days.

In regard to the botanical collections, I am too ignorant to express any opinion. The point seems to be how far botanists would object to travel to Kew; but there are evidently many great advantages in the transportation.

If I had my own way, I would make the British Museum collection only a typical one for display, which would be quite as amusing and far more instructive to the populace (and I think to naturalists) than the present enormous display of birds and mammals. I would save expense of stuffing, and would keep all skins, except a few "typicals," in drawers. Thus much room would be saved, and a little more space could be given to real workers, who could work all day. Rooms fitted up with thousands of drawers would cost very little. With this I should be contented. Until I had pretty sure information that we were going to be turned out, I would not stir in the matter. With such opponents as you name, I daresay I am quite wrong; but this is my best, though doubtful, present judgment...

It seems to me dangerous even to hint at a new Scientific Museum--a popular Museum, and to subsidise the Zoological Gardens; it would, I think, frighten any Government.

67. TO J.D. HOOKER. Moor Park, Farnham, Surrey [October] 29th [1858]

As you say that you have good private information that Government does intend to remove the collection from the British Museum, the case to me individually is wholly changed; and as the memorial now stands, with such expression at its head, I have no objection whatever to sign. I must express a very strong opinion that it would be an immense evil to remove to Kensington, not on account of the men of science so much as for the masses in the whole eastern and central part of London. I further think it would be a great evil to separate a typical collection (which I can by no means look at as only popular) from the collection in full. Might not some expression be added, even stronger than those now used, on the display (which is a sort of vanity in the curators) of such a vast number of birds and mammals, with such a loss of room. I am low at the conviction that Government will never give money enough for a really good library.

I do not want to be crotchety, but I should hate signing without some expression about the site being easily accessible to the populace of the whole of London.

I repeat, as things now stand, I shall be proud to sign.

68. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, November 3rd [1858]

I most entirely subscribe to all you say in your note. I have had some correspondence with Hooker on the subject. As it seems certain that a movement in the British Museum is generally anticipated, my main objection is quite removed; and, as I have told Hooker, I have no objection whatever to sign a memorial of the nature of the one he sent me or that now returned. Both seem to me very good. I cannot help being fearful whether Government will ever grant money enough for books. I can see many advantages in not being under the unmotherly wing of art and archaeology, and my only fear was that we were not strong enough to live without some protection, so profound, I think, is the contempt for and ignorance of Natural Science amongst the gentry of England. Hooker tells me that I should be converted into favour of Kensington Gore if I heard all that could be said in its favour; but I cannot yet help thinking so western a locality a great misfortune. Has Lyell been consulted? His would be a powerful name, and such names go for much with our ignorant Governors. You seem to have taken much trouble in the business, and I honour you for it.

69. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, November 9th [1858]

I am quite delighted to hear about the Copley and Lyell. (69/1. The Copley Medal of the Royal Society was awarded to Lyell in 1858.) I have grown hot with indignation many times thinking of the way the proposal was met last year, according to your account of it. I am also very glad to hear of Hancock (Albany Hancock received a Royal Medal in 1858.); it will show the provincials are not neglected. Altogether the medals are capital. I shall be proud and bound to help in any way about the eloge, which is rather a heavy tax on proposers of medals, as I found about Richardson and Westwood; but Lyell's case will be twenty times as difficult. I will begin this very evening dotting down a few remarks on Lyell; though, no doubt, most will be superfluous, and several would require deliberate consideration. Anyhow, such notes may be a preliminary aid to you; I will send them in a few days' time, and will do anything else you may wish...

P.S.--I have had a letter from Henslow this morning. He comes here on [Thursday] 25th, and I shall be delighted to see him; but it stops my coming to the Club, as I had arranged to do, and now I suppose I shall not be in London till December 16th, if odds and ends do not compel me to come sooner. Of course I have not said a word to Henslow of my change of plans. I had looked forward with pleasure to a chat with you and others.

P.S. 2.--I worked all yesterday evening in thinking, and have written the paper sent by this post this morning. Not one sentence would do, but it is the sort of rough sketch which I should have drawn out if I had had to do it. God knows whether it will at all aid you. It is miserably written, with horridly bad metaphors, probably horrid bad grammar. It is my deliberate impression, such as I should have written to any friend who had asked me what I thought of Lyell's merits. I will do anything else which you may wish, or that I can.

70. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, December 30th [1858]

I have had this copied to save you trouble, as it was vilely written, and is now vilely expressed.

Your letter has interested me greatly; but how inextricable are the subjects which we are discussing! I do not think I said that I thought the productions of Asia were HIGHER (70/1. On the use of the terms "higher" and "lower" see Letters 35 and 36.) than those of Australia. I intend carefully to avoid this expression (70/2. In a paper of pencilled notes pinned into Darwin's copy of the "Vestiges" occur the words: "Never use the word (sic) higher and lower."), for I do not think that any one has a definite idea what is meant by higher, except in classes which can loosely be compared with man. On our theory of Natural Selection, if the organisms of any area belonging to the Eocene or Secondary periods were put into competition with those now existing in the same area (or probably in any part of the world) they (i.e. the old ones) would be beaten hollow and be exterminated; if the theory be true, this must be so. In the same manner, I believe, a greater number of the productions of Asia, the largest territory in the world, would beat those of Australia, than conversely. So it seems to be between Europe and North America, for I can hardly believe in the difference of the stream of commerce causing so great a difference in the proportions of immigrants. But this sort of highness (I wish I could invent some expression, and must try to do so) is different from highness in the common acceptation of the word. It might be connected with degradation of organisation: thus the blind degraded worm-like snake (Typhlops) might supplant the true earthworm. Here then would be degradation in the class, but certainly increase in the scale of organisation in the general inhabitants of the country. On the other hand, it would be quite as easy to believe that true earthworms might beat out the Typhlops. I do not see how this "competitive highness" can be tested in any way by us. And this is a comfort to me when mentally comparing the Silurian and Recent organisms. Not that I doubt a long course of "competitive highness" will ultimately make the organisation higher in every sense of the word; but it seems most difficult to test it. Look at the Erigeron canadensis on the one hand and Anacharis (70/3. Anacharis (Elodea canadensis) and Erigeron canadensis are both successful immigrants from America.) on the other; these plants must have some advantage over European productions, to spread as they have. Yet who could discover it? Monkeys can co-exist with sloths and opossums, orders at the bottom of the scale; and the opossums might well be beaten by placental insectivores, coming from a country where there were no monkeys, etc. I should be sorry to give up the view that an old and very large continuous territory would generally produce organisms higher in the competitive sense than a smaller territory. I may, of course, be quite wrong about the plants of Australia (and your facts are, of course, quite new to me on their highness), but when I read the accounts of the immense spreading of European plants in Australia, and think of the wool and corn brought thence to Europe, and not one plant naturalised, I can hardly avoid the suspicion that Europe beats Australia in its productions. If many (i.e. more than one or two) Australian plants are TRULY naturalised in India (N.B. Naturalisation on Indian mountains hardly quite fair, as mountains are small islands in the land) I must strike my colours. I should be glad to hear whether what I have written very obscurely on this point produces ANY effect on you; for I want to clear my mind, as perhaps I should put a sentence or two in my abstract on this subject. (70/4. Abstract was Darwin's name for the "Origin" during parts of 1858 and 1859.)

I have always been willing to strike my colours on former immense tracts of land in oceans, if any case required it in an eminent degree. Perhaps yours may be a case, but at present I greatly prefer land in the Antarctic regions, where now there is only ice and snow, but which before the Glacial period might well have been clothed by vegetation. You have thus to invent far less land, and that more central; and aid is got by floating ice for transporting seed.

I hope I shall not weary you by scribbling my notions at this length. After writing last to you I began to think that the Malay Land might have existed through part of the Glacial epoch. Why I at first doubted was from the difference of existing mammals in different islands; but many are very close, and some identical in the islands, and I am constantly deceiving myself from thinking of the little change which the shells and plants, whilst all co-existing in their own northern hemisphere, have undergone since the Glacial epoch; but I am convinced that this is most false reasoning, for the relations of organism to new organisms, when thrown together, are by far the most important.

When you speak of plants having undergone more change since old geological periods than animals, are you not rather comparing plants with higher animals? Think how little some, indeed many, mollusca have changed. Remember Silurian Nautilus, Lingula and other Brachiopods, and Nucula, and amongst Echinoderms, the Silurian Asterias, etc.

What you say about lowness of brackish-water plants interests me. I remember that they are apt to be social (i.e. many individuals in comparison to specific forms), and I should be tempted to look at this as a case of a very small area, and consequently of very few individuals in comparison with those on the land or in pure fresh-water; and hence less development (odious word!) than on land or fresh-water. But here comes in your two-edged sword! I should like much to see any paper on plants of brackish water or on the edge of the sea; but I suppose such has never been published.

Thanks about Nelumbium, for I think this was the very plant which from the size of seed astonished me, and which A. De Candolle adduced as a marvellous case of almost impossible transport. I now find to my surprise that herons do feed sometimes on [illegible] fruit; and grebes on seeds of Compositae.

Many thanks for offer of help about a grant for the Abstract; but I should hope it would sell enough to pay expenses.

I am reading your letter and scribbling as I go on.

Your oak and chestnut case seems very curious; is it not the more so as beeches have gone to, or come from the south? But I vehemently protest against you or any one making such cases especial marvels, without you are prepared to say why each species in any flora is twice or thrice, etc., rarer than each other species which grows in the same soil. The more I think, the more evident is it to me how utterly ignorant we are of the thousand contingencies on which range, frequency, and extinction of each species depend.

I have sometimes thought, from Edentata (70/5. No doubt a slip of the pen for Monotremata.) and Marsupialia, that Australia retains a remnant of the former and ancient state of the fauna of the world, and I suppose that you are coming to some such conclusion for plants; but is not the relation between the Cape and Australia too special for such views? I infer from your writings that the relation is too special between Fuegia and Australia to allow us to look at the resemblances in certain plants as the relics of mundane resemblances. On the other hand, [have] not the Sandwich Islands in the Northern Hemisphere some odd relations to Australia? When we are dead and gone what a noble subject will be Geographical Distribution!

You may say what you like, but you will never convince me that I do not owe you ten times as much as you can owe me. Farewell, my dear Hooker. I am sorry to hear that you are both unwell with influenza. Do not bother yourself in answering anything in this, except your general impression on the battle between N. and S.

71. TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, April 6th, 1859

I this morning received your pleasant and friendly note of November 30th. The first part of my MS. is in Murray's hands to see if he likes to publish it. There is no preface, but a short introduction, which must be read by every one who reads my book. The second paragraph in the introduction (71/1. "Origin of Species," Edition I., 1859, pages 1 and 2.) I have had copied verbatim from my foul copy, and you will, I hope, think that I have fairly noticed your paper in the "Linn. Journal." (71/2. "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties, and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection." By Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace. Communicated by Sir Charles Lyell and J.D. Hooker. "Journ. Linn. Soc." Volume III., page 45, 1859. (Read July 1st, 1858.)) You must remember that I am now publishing only an abstract, and I give no references. I shall, of course, allude to your paper on distribution (71/3. "On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species" (A.R. Wallace). "Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume XVI., page 184, 1855. The law alluded to is thus stated by Wallace: "Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species" (loc. cit., page 186).); and I have added that I know from correspondence that your explanation of your law is the same as that which I offer. You are right, that I came to the conclusion that selection was the principle of change from the study of domesticated productions; and then, reading Malthus, I saw at once how to apply this principle. Geographical distribution and geological relations of extinct to recent inhabitants of South America first led me to the subject: especially the case of the Galapagos Islands. I hope to go to press in the early part of next month. It will be a small volume of about five hundred pages or so. I will of course send you a copy. I forget whether I told you that Hooker, who is our best British botanist and perhaps the best in the world, is a full convert, and is now going immediately to publish his confession of faith; and I expect daily to see proof-sheets. (71/4. "The Flora of Australia, etc., an Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania." London 1859.) Huxley is changed, and believes in mutation of species: whether a convert to us, I do not quite know. We shall live to see all the younger men converts. My neighbour and an excellent naturalist, J. Lubbock, is an enthusiastic convert. I see that you are doing great work in the Archipelago; and most heartily do I sympathise with you. For God's sake take care of your health. There have been few such noble labourers in the cause of Natural Science as you are.

P.S. You cannot tell how I admire your spirit, in the manner in which you have taken all that was done about publishing all our papers. I had actually written a letter to you, stating that I would not publish anything before you had published. I had not sent that letter to the post when I received one from Lyell and Hooker, urging me to send some MS. to them, and allow them to act as they thought fair and honestly to both of us; and I did so.

(71/5. The following is the passage from the Introduction to the "Origin of Species," referred to in the first paragraph of the above letter.)

"My work is now nearly finished; but as it will take me two or three years more to complete it, and as my health is far from strong, I have been urged to publish this Abstract. I have more especially been induced to do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the Natural History of the Malay Archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on the origin of species. Last year he sent to me a memoir on this subject, with a request that I would forward it to Sir Charles Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is published in the third volume of the Journal of that Society. Sir C. Lyell and Dr. Hooker, who both knew of my work--the latter having read my sketch of 1844--honoured me by thinking it advisable to publish, with Mr. Wallace's excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my manuscripts."

72. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 3rd, 1859

With respect to reversion, I have been raking up vague recollections of vague facts; and the impression on my mind is rather more in favour of reversion than it was when you were here.

In my abstract (72/1. "The Origin of Species.") I give only a paragraph on the general case of reversion, though I enter in detail on some cases of reversion of a special character. I have not as yet put all my facts on this subject in mass, so can come to no definite conclusion. But as single characters may revert, I must say that I see no improbability in several reverting. As I do not believe any well-founded experiments or facts are known, each must form his opinion from vague generalities. I think you confound two rather distinct considerations; a variation arises from any cause, and reversion is not opposed to this, but solely to its inheritance. Not but what I believe what we must call perhaps a dozen distinct laws are all struggling against each other in every variation which ever arises. To give my impression, if I were forced to bet whether or not, after a hundred generations of growth in a poor sandy soil, a cauliflower and red cabbage would or would not revert to the same form, I must say I would rather stake my money that they would. But in such a case the conditions of life are changed (and here comes the question of direct influence of condition), and there is to be no selection, the comparatively sudden effect of man's selection are left to the free play of reversion.

In short, I dare not come to any conclusion without comparing all facts which I have collected, and I do not think there are many.

Please do not say to any one that I thought my book on species would be fairly popular and have a fairly remunerative sale (which was the height of my ambition), for if it prove a dead failure it would make me the more ridiculous.

73. TO W.H. MILLER. Down, June 5th [1859]

I thank you much for your letter. Had I seen the interest of my remark I would have made many more measurements, though I did make several. I stated the facts merely to give the general reader an idea of the thickness of the walls. (73/1. The walls of bees' cells: see Letter 173.)

Especially if I had seen that the fact had any general bearing, I should have stated that as far as I could measure, the walls are by no means perfectly of the same thickness. Also I should have stated that the chief difference is when the thickness of walls of the upper part of the hexagon and of the pyramidal basal plates are contrasted. Will you oblige me by looking with a strong lens at the bit of comb, brushing off with a knife the upper thickened edges, and then compare, by eye alone, the thickness of the walls there with the thickness of the basal plates, as seen in any cross section. I should very much like to hear whether, even in this way, the difference is not perceptible. It is generally thus perceptible by comparing the thickness of the walls of the hexagon (if not taken very close to the angle) near to the basal plates, where the comparison by eye is of course easier. Your letter actually turned me sick with panic; from not seeing any great importance [in the] fact, till I looked at my notes, I did not remember that I made several measurements. I have now repeated the same measurements, roughly with the same general results, but the difference, I think, is hardly double.

I should not have mentioned the thickness of the basal plates at all, had I not thought it would give an unfair notion of the thickness of the walls to state the lesser measurements alone.

74. TO W.H. MILLER. [1859]

I had no thought that you would measure the thickness of the walls of the cells; but if you will, and allow me to give your measurements, it will be an immense advantage. As it is no trouble, I send more specimens. If you measure, please observe that I measured the thickness of the walls of the hexagonal prisms not very near the base; but from your very interesting remarks the lower part of the walls ought to be measured.

Thank you for the suggestion about how bees judge of angles and distances. I will keep it in mind. It is a complete perplexity to me, and yet certainly insects can rudely somehow judge of distance. There are special difficulties on account of the gradation in size between the worker-scells and the larger drone-cells. I am trying to test the case practically by getting combs of different species, and of our own bee from different climates. I have lately had some from the W. Indies of our common bee, but the cells SEEM certainly to be larger; but they have not yet been carefully measured. I will keep your suggestion in mind whenever I return to experiments on living bees; but that will not be soon.

As you have been considering my little discussion in relation to Lord Brougham (74/1. Lord Brougham's paper on "The Mathematical Structure of Bees' Cells," read before the National Institute of France in May, 1858.), and as I have been more vituperated for this part than for almost any other, I should like just to tell you how I think the case stands. The discussion viewed by itself is worth little more than the paper on which it is printed, except in so far as it contains three or four certainly new facts. But to those who are inclined to believe the general truth of the conclusion that species and their instincts are slowly modified by what I call Natural Selection, I think my discussion nearly removes a very great difficulty. I believe in its truth chiefly from the existence of the Melipona, which makes a comb so intermediate in structure between that of the humble and hive-bee, and especially from the new and curious fact of the bees making smooth cups or saucers when they excavated in a thick piece of wax, which saucers stood so close that hexagons were built on their intersecting edges. And, lastly, because when they excavated on a thin slip of wax, the excavation on both sides of similar smooth basins was stopped, and flat planes left between the nearly opposed basins. If my view were wholly false these cases would, I think, never have occurred. Sedgwick and Co. may abuse me to their hearts' content, but I shall as yet continue to think that mine is a rational explanation (as far as it goes) of their method of work.

75. TO W.H. MILLER

Down, December 1st [1859].

Some months ago you were so kind as to say you would measure the thickness of the walls of the basal and side plates of the cell of the bee. Could you find time to do so soon? Why I want it soon, is that I have lately heard from Murray that he sold at his sale far more copies than he has of the "Origin of Species," and that I must immediately prepare a new edition, which I am now correcting. By the way, I hear from Murray that all the attacks heaped on my book do not seem to have at all injured the sale, which will make poor dear old Sedgwick groan. If the basal plates and walls do differ considerably in thickness, as they certainly did in the one or two cells which I measured without particular care (as I never thought the point of any importance), will you tell me the bearing of the fact as simply as you can, for the chance of one so stupid as I am in geometry being able to understand?

Would the greater thickness of the basal plates and of the rim of the hexagons be a good adaptation to carry the vertical weight of the cells filled with honey and supporting clusters of living bees?

Will you endeavour to screw out time and grant me this favour?

P.S. If the result of your measurement of the thickness of the walls turns out at all what I have asserted, would it not be worth while to write a little bit of a paper on the subject of your former note; and "pluck" the bees if they deserve this degradation? Many mathematicians seem to have thought the subject worthy of attention. When the cells are full of honey and hang vertically they have to support a great weight. Can the thicker basal plates be a contrivance to give strength to the whole comb, with less consumption of wax, than if all the sides of the hexagons were thickened?

This crude notion formerly crossed my mind; but of course it is beyond me even to conjecture how the case would be.

A mathematician, Mr. Wright, has been writing on the geometry of bee-cells in the United States in consequence of my book; but I can hardly understand his paper. (75/1. Chauncey Wright, "Remarks on the Architecture of Bees" ("Amer. Acad. Proc." IV., 1857-60, page 432.)

76. TO T.H. HUXLEY

(76/1. The date of this letter is unfortunately doubtful, otherwise it would prove that at an early date he was acquainted with Erasmus Darwin's views on evolution, a fact which has not always been recognised. We can hardly doubt that it was written in 1859, for at this time Mr. Huxley was collecting facts about breeding for his lecture given at the Royal Institution on February 10th, 1860, on "Species and Races and their Origin." See "Life and Letters," II., page 281.)

Down [June?] 9 [1859?].

If on the 11th you have half an hour to spare, you might like to see a very good show of pigeons, and the enclosed card will admit you.

The history of error is quite unimportant, but it is curious to observe how exactly and accurately my grandfather (in "Zoonomia," Volume I., page 504, 1794) gives Lamarck's theory. I will quote one sentence. Speaking of birds' beaks, he says: "All which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations by the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to supply the want of food, and to have been delivered to their posterity with constant improvement of them for the purposes required." Lamarck published "Hist. Zoolog." in 1809. The "Zoonomia" was translated into many languages.

77. TO C. LYELL. Down, 28 [June 1859]

It is not worth while troubling you, but my conscience is uneasy at having forgotten to thank you for your "Etna" (77/1. "On the Structure of Lavas which have been consolidated on Steep Slopes, with remarks on the Mode of Origin of Mount Etna, and on the Theory of 'Craters of Elevation'" ("Phil. Trans. R. Soc." Volume CXLVIII., 1858, page 703).), which seems to me a magnificent contribution to volcanic geology, and I should think you might now rest on your oars in this department.

As soon as ever I can get a copy of my book (77/2. "The Origin of Species," London, 1859.) ready, in some six weeks' or two months' time, it shall be sent you; and if you approve of it, even to a moderate extent, it will be the highest satisfaction which I shall ever receive for an amount of labour which no one will ever appreciate.

78. TO J.D. HOOKER

(78/1. The reference in the following letter is to the proofs of Hooker's "Australian Flora.")

Down, 28 [July 1859].

The returned sheet is chiefly that which I received in MS. Parts seem to me (though perhaps it may be forgetfulness) much improved, and I retain my former impression that the whole discussion on the Australian flora is admirably good and original. I know you will understand and not object to my thus expressing my opinion (for one must form one) so presumptuously. I have no criticisms, except perhaps I should like you somewhere to say, when you refer to me, that you refer only to the notice in the "Linnean Journal;" not that, on my deliberate word of honour, I expect that you will think more favourably of the whole than of the suggestion in the "Journal." I am far more than satisfied at what you say of my work; yet it would be as well to avoid the appearance of your remarks being a criticism on my fuller work.

I am very sorry to hear you are so hard-worked. I also get on very slowly, and have hardly as yet finished half my volume...I returned on last Tuesday from a week's hydropathy.

Take warning by me, and do not work too hard. For God's sake, think of this.

It is dreadfully uphill work with me getting my confounded volume finished.

I wish you well through all your labours. Adios.

79. TO ASA GRAY. Down, November 29th [1859]

This shall be such an extraordinary note as you have never received from me, for it shall not contain one single question or request. I thank you for your impression on my views. Every criticism from a good man is of value to me. What you hint at generally is very, very true: that my work will be grievously hypothetical, and large parts by no means worthy of being called induction, my commonest error being probably induction from too few facts. I had not thought of your objection of my using the term "natural selection" as an agent. I use it much as a geologist does the word denudation--for an agent, expressing the result of several combined actions. I will take care to explain, not merely by inference, what I mean by the term; for I must use it, otherwise I should incessantly have to expand it into some such (here miserably expressed) formula as the following: "The tendency to the preservation (owing to the severe struggle for life to which all organic beings at some time or generation are exposed) of any, the slightest, variation in any part, which is of the slightest use or favourable to the life of the individual which has thus varied; together with the tendency to its inheritance." Any variation, which was of no use whatever to the individual, would not be preserved by this process of "natural selection." But I will not weary you by going on, as I do not suppose I could make my meaning clearer without large expansion. I will only add one other sentence: several varieties of sheep have been turned out together on the Cumberland mountains, and one particular breed is found to succeed so much better than all the others that it fairly starves the others to death. I should here say that natural selection picks out this breed, and would tend to improve it, or aboriginally to have formed it...

You speak of species not having any material base to rest on, but is this any greater hardship than deciding what deserves to be called a variety, and be designated by a Greek letter? When I was at systematic work, I know I longed to have no other difficulty (great enough) than deciding whether the form was distinct enough to deserve a name, and not to be haunted with undefined and unanswerable questions whether it was a true species. What a jump it is from a well-marked variety, produced by natural cause, to a species produced by the separate act of the hand of God! But I am running on foolishly. By the way, I met the other day Phillips, the palaeontologist, and he asked me, "How do you define a species?" I answered, "I cannot." Whereupon he said, "at last I have found out the only true definition,--any form which has ever had a specific name!"...

80. TO C. LYELL. Ilkley, October 31st [1859]

That you may not misunderstand how far I go with Pallas and his many disciples I should like to add that, though I believe that our domestic dogs have descended from several wild forms, and though I must think that the sterility, which they would probably have evinced, if crossed before being domesticated, has been eliminated, yet I go but a very little way with Pallas & Co. in their belief in the importance of the crossing and blending of the aboriginal stocks. (80/1. "With our domesticated animals, the various races when crossed together are quite fertile; yet in many cases they are descended from two or more wild species. From this fact we must conclude either that the aboriginal parent-species at first produced perfectly fertile hybrids, or that the hybrids subsequently reared under domestication became quite fertile. This latter alternative, which was first propounded by Pallas, seems by far the most probable, and can, indeed, hardly be doubted" ("Origin of Species," Edition VI., page 240).) You will see this briefly put in the first chapter. Generally, with respect to crossing, the effects may be diametrically opposite. If you cross two very distinct races, you may make (not that I believe such has often been made) a third and new intermediate race; but if you cross two exceedingly close races, or two slightly different individuals of the same race, then in fact you annul and obliterate the difference. In this latter way I believe crossing is all-important, and now for twenty years I have been working at flowers and insects under this point of view. I do not like Hooker's terms, centripetal and centrifugal (80/2. Hooker's "Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania," pages viii. and ix.): they remind me of Forbes' bad term of Polarity. (80/3. Forbes, "On the Manifestation of Polarity in the Distribution of Organised Beings in Time."--"R. Institution Proc." I., 1851-54.)

I daresay selection by man would generally work quicker than Natural Selection; but the important distinction between them is, that man can scarcely select except external and visible characters, and secondly, he selects for his own good; whereas under nature, characters of all kinds are selected exclusively for each creature's own good, and are well exercised; but you will find all this in Chapter IV.

Although the hound, greyhound, and bull-dog may possibly have descended from three distinct stocks, I am convinced that their present great amount of difference is mainly due to the same causes which have made the breeds of pigeons so different from each other, though these breeds of pigeons have all descended from one wild stock; so that the Pallasian doctrine I look at as but of quite secondary importance.

In my bigger book I have explained my meaning fully; whether I have in the Abstract I cannot remember.

81. TO C. LYELL. [December 5th, 1859.]

I forget whether you take in the "Times;" for the chance of your not doing so, I send the enclosed rich letter. (81/1. See the "Times," December 1st and December 5th, 1859: two letters signed "Senex," dealing with "Works of Art in the Drift.") It is, I am sure, by Fitz-Roy...It is a pity he did not add his theory of the extinction of Mastodon, etc., from the door of the Ark being made too small. (81/2. A postscript to this letter, here omitted, is published in the "Life and Letters," II., page 240.)

82. FRANCIS GALTON TO CHARLES DARWIN. 42, Rutland Gate, London, S.W., December 9th, 1859

Pray let me add a word of congratulation on the completion of your wonderful volume, to those which I am sure you will have received from every side. I have laid it down in the full enjoyment of a feeling that one rarely experiences after boyish days, of having been initiated into an entirely new province of knowledge, which, nevertheless, connects itself with other things in a thousand ways. I hear you are engaged on a second edition. There is a trivial error in page 68, about rhinoceroses (82/1. Down (loc. cit.) says that neither the elephant nor the rhinoceros is destroyed by beasts of prey. Mr. Galton wrote that the wild dogs hunt the young rhinoceros and "exhaust them to death; they pursue them all day long, tearing at their ears, the only part their teeth can fasten on." The reference to the rhinoceros is omitted in later editions of the "Origin."), which I thought I might as well point out, and have taken advantage of the same opportunity to scrawl down half a dozen other notes, which may, or may not, be worthless to you.

(83/1. The three next letters refer to Huxley's lecture on Evolution, given at the Royal Institution on February 10th, 1860, of which the peroration is given in "Life and Letters," II., page 282, together with some letters on the subject.)

83. TO T.H. HUXLEY. November 25th [1859]

I rejoice beyond measure at the lecture. I shall be at home in a fortnight, when I could send you splendid folio coloured drawings of pigeons. Would this be in time? If not, I think I could write to my servants and have them sent to you. If I do NOT hear I shall understand that about fifteen or sixteen days will be in time.

I have had a kind yet slashing letter against me from poor dear old Sedgwick, "who has laughed till his sides ached at my book."

Phillips is cautious, but decidedly, I fear, hostile. Hurrah for the Lecture--it is grand!

84. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, December 13th [1859]

I have got fine large drawings (84/1. For Mr. Huxley's R.I. lecture.) of the Pouter, Carrier, and Tumbler; I have only drawings in books of Fantails, Barbs, and Scanderoon Runts. If you had them, you would have a grand display of extremes of diversity. Will they pay at the Royal Institution for copying on a large size drawings of these birds? I could lend skulls of a Carrier and a Tumbler (to show the great difference) for the same purpose, but it would not probably be worth while.

I have been looking at my MS. What you want I believe is about hybridism and breeding. The chapter on hybridism is in a pretty good state--about 150 folio pages with notes and references on the back. My first chapter on breeding is in too bad and imperfect a state to send; but my discussion on pigeons (in about 100 folio pages) is in a pretty good state. I am perfectly convinced that you would never have patience to read such volumes of MS. I speak now in the palace of truth, and pray do you: if you think you would read them I will send them willingly up by my servant, or bring them myself next week. But I have no copy, and I never could possibly replace them; and without you really thought that you would use them, I had rather not risk them. But I repeat I will willingly bring them, if you think you would have the vast patience to use them. Please let me hear on this subject, and whether I shall send the book with small drawings of three other breeds or skulls. I have heard a rumour that Busk is on our side in regard to species. Is this so? It would be very good.

85. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, December 16th [1859]

I thank you for your very pleasant and amusing note and invitation to dinner, which I am sorry to say I cannot accept. I shall come up (stomach willing) on Thursday for Phil. Club dinner, and return on Saturday, and I am engaged to my brother for Friday. But I should very much like to call at the Museum on Friday or Saturday morning and see you. Would you let me have one line either here or at 57, Queen Anne Street, to say at what hour you generally come to the Museum, and whether you will be probably there on Friday or Saturday? Even if you are at the Club, it will be a mere chance if we sit near each other.

I will bring up the articles on Thursday afternoon, and leave them under charge of the porter at the Museum. They will consist of large drawings of a Pouter, a Carrier, and rather smaller drawings of some sub-varieties (which breed nearly true) of short-faced Tumblers. Also a small drawing of Scanderoon, a kind of Runt, and a very remarkable breed. Also a book with very moderately good drawings of Fantail and Barb, but I very much doubt whether worth the trouble of enlarging.

Also a box (for Heaven's sake, take care!) with a skull of Carrier and short-faced Tumbler; also lower jaws (largest size) of Runt, middle size of Rock-pigeon, and the broad one of Barb. The form of ramus of jaw differs curiously in these jaws.

Also MS. of hybridism and pigeons, which will just weary you to death. I will call myself for or send a servant for the MS. and bones whenever you have done with them; but do not hurry.

You have hit on the exact plan, which, on the advice of Lyell, Murray, etc., I mean to follow--viz., bring out separate volumes in detail--and I shall begin with domestic productions; but I am determined to try and [work] very slowly, so that, if possible, I may keep in a somewhat better state of health. I had not thought of illustrations; that is capital advice. Farewell, my good and admirable agent for the promulgation of damnable heresies!

86. TO L. HORNER. Down, December 23rd [1859]

I must have the pleasure of thanking you for your extremely kind letter. I am very much pleased that you approve of my book, and that you are going to pay me the extraordinary compliment of reading it twice. I fear that it is tough reading, but it is beyond my powers to make the subject clearer. Lyell would have done it admirably.

You must enjoy being a gentlemen at your ease, and I hear that you have returned with ardour to work at the Geological Society. We hope in the course of the winter to persuade Mrs. Horner and yourself and daughters to pay us a visit. Ilkley did me extraordinary good during the latter part of my stay and during my first week at home; but I have gone back latterly to my bad ways, and fear I shall never be decently well and strong.

P.S.--When any of your party write to Mildenhall I should be much obliged if you would say to Bunbury that I hope he will not forget, whenever he reads my book, his promise to let me know what he thinks about it; for his knowledge is so great and accurate that every one must value his opinions highly. I shall be quite contented if his belief in the immutability of species is at all staggered.

87. TO C. LYELL

(87/1. In the "Origin of Species" a section of Chapter X. is devoted to "The succession of the same types within the same areas, during the late Tertiary period" (Edition I., page 339). Mr. Darwin wrote as follows: "Mr. Clift many years ago showed that the fossil mammals from the Australian caves were closely allied to the living marsupials of that continent." After citing other instances illustrating the same agreement between fossil and recent types, Mr. Darwin continues: "I was so much impressed with these facts that I strongly insisted, in 1839 and 1845, on this 'law of the succession of types,' on 'this wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living.' Professor Owen has subsequently extended the same generalisation to the mammals of the Old World.")

Down, [December] 27th [1859].

Owen wrote to me to ask for the reference to Clift. As my own notes for the late chapters are all in chaos, I bethought me who was the most trustworthy man of all others to look for references, and I answered myself, "Of course Lyell." In the ["Principles of Geology"], edition of 1833, Volume III., chapter xi., page 144, you will find the reference to Clift in the "Edinburgh New Phil Journal," No. XX., page 394. (87/2. The correct reference to Clift's "Report" on fossil bones from New Holland is "Edinburgh New Phil. Journal," 1831, page 394.) You will also find that you were greatly struck with the fact itself (87/3. This refers to the discovery of recent and fossil species of animals in an Australian cave-breccia. Mr. Clift is quoted as having identified one of the bones, which was much larger than the rest, as that of a hippopotamus.), which I had quite forgotten. I copied the passage, and sent it to Owen. Why I gave in some detail references to my own work is that Owen (not the first occasion with respect to myself and others) quietly ignores my having ever generalised on the subject, and makes a great fuss on more than one occasion at having discovered the law of succession. In fact, this law, with the Galapagos distribution, first turned my mind on the origin of species. My own references are [to the "Naturalist's Voyage"]:

Large 8vo, Murray, Edition 1839 Edition 1845

Page 210 Page 173 On succession.

Page 153 Pages 131-32 On splitting up of old geographical provinces.

Long before Owen published I had in MS. worked out the succession of types in the Old World (as I remember telling Sedgwick, who of course disbelieved it).

Since receiving your last letter on Hooker, I have read his introduction as far as page xxiv (87/4. "On the Flora of Australia, etc.; being an Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania": London, 1859.), where the Australian flora begins, and this latter part I liked most in the proofs. It is a magnificent essay. I doubt slightly about some assertions, or rather should have liked more facts--as, for instance, in regard to species varying most on the confines of their range. Naturally I doubt a little his remarks about divergence (87/5. "Variation is effected by graduated changes; and the tendency of varieties, both in nature and under cultivation, when further varying, is rather to depart more and more widely from the original type than to revert to it." On the margin Darwin wrote: "Without selection doubtful" (loc. cit., page viii).), and about domestic races being produced under nature without selection. It would take much to persuade me that a Pouter Pigeon, or a Carrier, etc., could have been produced by the mere laws of variation without long continued selection, though each little enlargement of crop and beak are due to variation. I demur greatly to his comparison of the products of sinking and rising islands (87/6. "I venture to anticipate that a study of the vegetation of the islands with reference to the peculiarities of the generic types on the one hand, and of the geological conditions (whether as rising or sinking) on the other, may, in the present state of our knowledge, advance other subjects of distribution and variation considerably" (loc. cit., page xv).); in the Indian Ocean he compares exclusively many rising volcanic and sinking coral islands. The latter have a most peculiar soil, and are excessively small in area, and are tenanted by very few species; moreover, such low coral islands have probably been often, during their subsidence, utterly submerged, and restocked by plants from other islands. In the Pacific Ocean the floras of all the best cases are unknown. The comparison ought to have been exclusively between rising and fringed volcanic islands, and sinking and encircled volcanic islands. I have read Naudin (87/7. Naudin, "Revue Horticole," 1852?.), and Hooker agrees that he does not even touch on my views.

88. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. [1859 or 1860.]

I have had another talk with Bentham, who is greatly agitated by your book: evidently the stern, keen intellect is aroused, and he finds that it is too late to halt between two opinions. How it will go we shall see. I am intensely interested in what we shall come to, and never broach the subject to him. I finished the geological evidence chapters yesterday; they are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such forcible objections as you still hold them to be. I would say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imperfection of the Geological Record, though no language can be stronger or arguments fairer and sounder against it. Of course I am influenced by Botany, and the conviction that we have not in a fossilised condition a fraction of the plants that have existed, and that not a fraction of those we have are recognisable specifically. I never saw so clearly put the fact that it is not intermediates between existing species we want, but between these and the unknown tertium quid.

You certainly make a hobby of Natural Selection, and probably ride it too hard; that is a necessity of your case. If the improvement of the creation-by-variation doctrine is conceivable, it will be by unburthening your theory of Natural Selection, which at first sight seems overstrained--i.e., to account for too much. I think, too, that some of your difficulties which you override by Natural Selection may give way before other explanations. But, oh Lord! how little we do know and have known to be so advanced in knowledge by one theory. If we thought ourselves knowing dogs before you revealed Natural Selection, what d--d ignorant ones we must surely be now we do know that law.

I hear you may be at the Club on Thursday. I hope so. Huxley will not be there, so do not come on that ground.

89. TO T.H. HUXLEY. January 1st [1860]

I write one line merely to thank you for your pleasant note, and to say that I will keep your secret. I will shake my head as mysteriously as Lord Burleigh. Several persons have asked me who wrote that "most remarkable article" in the "Times." (89/1. The "Times," December 26th, 1859, page 8. The opening paragraphs were by one of the staff of the "Times." See "Life and Letters," II., page 255, for Mr. Huxley's interesting account of his share in the matter.) As a cat may look at a king, so I have said that I strongly suspected you. X was so sharp that the first sentence revealed the authorship. The Z's (God save the mark) thought it was Owen's! You may rely on it that it has made a deep impression, and I am heartily glad that the subject and I owe you this further obligation. But for God's sake, take care of your health; remember that the brain takes years to rest, whilst the muscles take only hours. There is poor Dana, to whom I used to preach by letter, writes to me that my prophecies are come true: he is in Florence quite done up, can read nothing and write nothing, and cannot talk for half an hour. I noticed the "naughty sentence" (89/2. Mr. Huxley, after speaking of the rudimental teeth of the whale, of rudimental jaws in insects which never bite, and rudimental eyes in blind animals, goes on: "And we would remind those who, ignorant of the facts, must be moved by authority, that no one has asserted the incompetence of the doctrine of final causes, in its application to physiology and anatomy, more strongly than our own eminent anatomist, Professor Owen, who, speaking of such cases, says ("On the Nature of Limbs," pages 39, 40), 'I think it will be obvious that the principle of final adaptations fails to satisfy all the conditions of the problem.'"--"The Times," December 26th, 1859.) about Owen, though my wife saw its bearing first. Farewell you best and worst of men!

That sentence about the bird and the fish dinners charmed us. Lyell wrote to me--style like yours.

Have you seen the slashing article of December 26th in the "Daily News," against my stealing from my "master," the author of the "Vestiges?"

90. TO J.L.A. DE QUATREFAGES. [Undated]

How I should like to know whether Milne Edwards has read the copy which I sent him, and whether he thinks I have made a pretty good case on our side of the question. There is no naturalist in the world for whose opinion I have so profound a respect. Of course I am not so silly as to expect to change his opinion.

91. TO C. LYELL

(91/1. The date of this letter is doubtful; but as it evidently refers to the 2nd edition of the "Origin," which appeared on January 7th, 1860, we believe that December 9th, 1859, is right. The letter of Sedgwick's is doubtless that given in the "Life and Letters," II., page 247; it is there dated December 24th, 1859, but from other evidence it was probably written on November 24th)

[December?] 9th [1859].

I send Sedgwick's letter; it is terribly muddled, and really the first page seems almost childish.

I am sadly over-worked, so will not write to you. I have worked in a number of your invaluable corrections--indeed, all as far as time permits. I infer from a letter from Huxley that Ramsay (91/2. See a letter to Huxley, November 27th, 1859, "Life and Letters," II., page 282.) is a convert, and I am extremely glad to get pure geologists, as they will be very few. Many thanks for your very pleasant note. What pleasure you have given me. I believe I should have been miserable had it not been for you and a few others, for I hear threatening of attacks which I daresay will be severe enough. But I am sure that I can now bear them.

92. TO T.H. HUXLEY

(92/1. The point here discussed is one to which Mr. Huxley attached great, in our opinion too great, importance.)

Down, January 11th [1860?].

I fully agree that the difficulty is great, and might be made much of by a mere advocate. Will you oblige me by reading again slowly from pages 267 to 272. (92/2. The reference is to the "Origin," Edition I.: the section on "The Fertility of Varieties when crossed, and of their Mongrel Offspring" occupies pages 267-72.) I may add to what is there said, that it seems to me quite hopeless to attempt to explain why varieties are not sterile, until we know the precise cause of sterility in species.

Reflect for a moment on how small and on what very peculiar causes the unequal reciprocity of fertility in the same two species must depend. Reflect on the curious case of species more fertile with foreign pollen than their own. Reflect on many cases which could be given, and shall be given in my larger book (independently of hybridity) of very slight changes of conditions causing one species to be quite sterile and not affecting a closely allied species. How profoundly ignorant we are on the intimate relation between conditions of life and impaired fertility in pure species!

The only point which I might add to my short discussion on this subject, is that I think it probable that the want of adaptation to uniform conditions of life in our domestic varieties has played an important part in preventing their acquiring sterility when crossed. For the want of uniformity, and changes in the conditions of life, seem the only cause of the elimination of sterility (when crossed) under domestication. (92/3. The meaning which we attach to this obscure sentence is as follows: Species in a state of nature are closely adapted to definite conditions of life, so that the sexual constitution of species A is attuned, as it were, to a condition different from that to which B is attuned, and this leads to sterility. But domestic varieties are not strictly adapted by Natural Selection to definite conditions, and thus have less specialised sexual constitutions.) This elimination, though admitted by many authors, rests on very slight evidence, yet I think is very probably true, as may be inferred from the case of dogs. Under nature it seems improbable that the differences in the reproductive constitution, on which the sterility of any two species when crossed depends, can be acquired directly by Natural Selection; for it is of no advantage to the species. Such differences in reproductive constitution must stand in correlation with some other differences; but how impossible to conjecture what these are! Reflect on the case of the variations of Verbascum, which differ in no other respect whatever besides the fluctuating element of the colour of the flower, and yet it is impossible to resist Gartner's evidence, that this difference in the colour does affect the mutual fertility of the varieties.

The whole case seems to me far too mysterious to rest (92/4. The word "rest" seems to be used in place of "to serve as a foundation for.") a valid attack on the theory of modification of species, though, as you say, it offers excellent ground for a mere advocate.

I am surprised, considering how ignorant we are on very many points, [that] more weak parts in my book have not as yet been pointed out to me. No doubt many will be. H.C. Watson founds his objection in MS. on there being no limit to infinite diversification of species: I have answered this, I think, satisfactorily, and have sent attack and answer to Lyell and Hooker. If this seems to you a good objection, I would send papers to you. Andrew Murray "disposes of" the whole theory by an ingenious difficulty from the distribution of blind cave insects (92/5. See "Life and Letters, Volume II., page 265. The reference here is to Murray's address before the Botanical Society, Edinburgh. Mr. Darwin seems to have read Murray's views only in a separate copy reprinted from the "Proc. R. Soc. Edin." There is some confusion about the date of the paper; the separate copy is dated January 16th, while in the volume of the "Proc. R. Soc." it is February 20th. In the "Life and Letters," II., page 261 it is erroneously stated that these are two different papers.); but it can, I think, be fairly answered.

93. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, [February] 2nd [1860]

I have had this morning a letter from old Bronn (93/1. See "Life and Letters, II., page 277.) (who, to my astonishment, seems slightly staggered by Natural Selection), and he says a publisher in Stuttgart is willing to publish a translation, and that he, Bronn, will to a certain extent superintend. Have you written to Kolliker? if not, perhaps I had better close with this proposal--what do you think? If you have written, I must wait, and in this case will you kindly let me hear as soon as you hear from Kolliker?

My poor dear friend, you will curse the day when you took up the "general agency" line; but really after this I will not give you any more trouble.

Do not forget the three tickets for us for your lecture, and the ticket for Baily, the poulterer.

Old Bronn has published in the "Year-book for Mineralogy" a notice of the "Origin" (93/2. "Neues Jahrb. fur Min." 1860, page 112.); and says he has himself published elsewhere a foreboding of the theory!

94. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, February 14th [1860]

I succeeded in persuading myself for twenty-four hours that Huxley's lecture was a success. (94/1. At the Royal Institution. See "Life and Letters," II., page 282.) Parts were eloquent and good, and all very bold; and I heard strangers say, "What a good lecture!" I told Huxley so; but I demurred much to the time wasted in introductory remarks, especially to his making it appear that sterility was a clear and manifest distinction of species, and to his not having even alluded to the more important parts of the subject. He said that he had much more written out, but time failed. After conversation with others and more reflection, I must confess that as an exposition of the doctrine the lecture seems to me an entire failure. I thank God I did not think so when I saw Huxley; for he spoke so kindly and magnificently of me, that I could hardly have endured to say what I now think. He gave no just idea of Natural Selection. I have always looked at the doctrine of Natural Selection as an hypothesis, which, if it explained several large classes of facts, would deserve to be ranked as a theory deserving acceptance; and this, of course, is my own opinion. But, as Huxley has never alluded to my explanation of classification, morphology, embryology, etc., I thought he was thoroughly dissatisfied with all this part of my book. But to my joy I find it is not so, and that he agrees with my manner of looking at the subject; only that he rates higher than I do the necessity of Natural Selection being shown to be a vera causa always in action. He tells me he is writing a long review in the "Westminster." It was really provoking how he wasted time over the idea of a species as exemplified in the horse, and over Sir J. Hall's old experiment on marble. Murchison was very civil to me over my book after the lecture, in which he was disappointed. I have quite made up my mind to a savage onslaught; but with Lyell, you, and Huxley, I feel confident we are right, and in the long run shall prevail. I do not think Asa Gray has quite done you justice in the beginning of the review of me. (94/2. "Review of Darwin's Theory on the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection," by "A.G." ("Amer. Jour. Sci." Volume XXIX., page 153, 1860). In a letter to Asa Gray on February 18th, 1860, Darwin writes: "Your review seems to me admirable; by far the best which I have read." ("Life and Letters," II., 1887, page 286.) The review seemed to me very good, but I read it very hastily.

95. TO C. LYELL. Down, [February] 18th [1860]

I send by this post Asa Gray, which seems to me very good, with the stamp of originality on it. Also Bronn's "Jahrbuch fur Mineralogie." (95/1. See Letter 93.)

The united intellect of my family has vainly tried to make it out. I never tried such confoundedly hard german; nor does it seem worth the labour. He sticks to Priestley's Green Matter, and seems to think that till it can be shown how life arises it is no good showing how the forms of life arise. This seems to me about as logical (comparing very great things with little) as to say it was no use in Newton showing the laws of attraction of gravity and the consequent movement of the planets, because he could not show what the attraction of gravity is.

The expression "Wahl der Lebens-Weise" (95/2. "Die fruchtbarste und allgemeinste Ursache der Varietaten-Bildung ist jedoch die Wahl der Lebens-Weise" (loc. cit., page 112).) makes me doubt whether B. understands what I mean by Natural Selection, as I have told him. He says (if I understand him) that you ought to be on the same side with me.

P.S. Sunday afternoon.--I have kept back this to thank you for your letter, with much news, received this morning. My conscience is uneasy at the time you waste in amusing and interesting me. I was very curious to hear about Phillips. The review in the "Annals" is, as I was convinced, by Wollaston, for I have had a very cordial letter from him this morning. (95/3. A bibliographical Notice "On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection; or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." ("Annals and Mag." Volume V., pages 132-43, 1860). The notice is not signed. Referring to the article, in a letter to Lyell, February 15th, 1860, Darwin writes: "I am perfectly convinced...that the review in the "Annals" is by Wollaston; no one else in the world would have used so many parentheses" ("Life and Letters," II., page 284).)

I send by this post an attack in the "Gardeners' Chronicle" by Harvey (a first-rate botanist, as you probably know). (95/4. In the "Gardeners' Chronicle" of February 18th, 1860, W.H. Harvey described a case of monstrosity in Begonia frigida, which he argued was hostile to the theory of Natural Selection. The passage about Harvey's attack was published in the "Life and Letters," II., page 275.) It seems to me rather strange; he assumes the permanence of monsters, whereas monsters are generally sterile, and not often inheritable. But grant his case, it comes [to this], that I have been too cautious in not admitting great and sudden variations. Here again comes in the mischief of my abstract. In fuller MS. I have discussed the parallel case of a normal fish like a monstrous gold-fish.

I end my discussion by doubting, because all cases of monstrosities which resemble normal structures which I could find were not in allied groups. Trees like Aspicarpa (95/5. Aspicarpa, an American genus of Malpighiaceae, is quoted in the "Origin" (Edition VI., page 367) as an illustration of Linnaeus' aphorism that the characters do not give the genus, but the genus gives the characters. During several years' cultivation in France Aspicarpa produced only degraded flowers, which differed in many of the most important points of structure from the proper type of the order; but it was recognised by M. Richard that the genus should be retained among the Malpighiaceae. "This case," adds Darwin, "well illustrates the spirit of our classification."), with flowers of two kinds (in the "Origin"), led me also to speculate on the same subject; but I could find only one doubtfully analogous case of species having flowers like the degraded or monstrous flowers. Harvey does not see that if only a few (as he supposes) of the seedlings inherited being monstrosities, Natural Selection would be necessary to select and preserve them. You had better return the "Gardeners' Chronicle," etc., to my brother's. The case of Begonia (95/6. Harvey's criticism was answered by Sir J.D. Hooker in the following number of the "Gardeners' Chronicle" (February 25th, 1860, page 170).) in itself is very curious; I am tempted to answer the notice, but I will refrain, for there would be no end to answers.

With respect to your objection of a multitude of still living simple forms, I have not discussed it anywhere in the "Origin," though I have often thought it over. What you say about progress being only occasional and retrogression not uncommon, I agree to; only that in the animal kingdom I greatly doubt about retrogression being common. I have always put it to myself--What advantage can we see in an infusory animal, or an intestinal worm, or coral polypus, or earthworm being highly developed? If no advantage, they would not become highly developed: not but what all these animals have very complex structures (except infusoria), and they may well be higher than the animals which occupied similar places in the economy of nature before the Silurian epoch. There is a blind snake with the appearances and, in some respects, habits of earthworms; but this blind snake does not tend, as far as we can see, to replace and drive out worms. I think I must in a future edition discuss a few more such points, and will introduce this and H.C. Watson's objection about the infinite number of species and the general rise in organisation. But there is a directly opposite objection to yours which is very difficult to answer--viz. how at the first start of life, when there were only the simplest organisms, how did any complication of organisation profit them? I can only answer that we have not facts enough to guide any speculation on the subject.

With respect to Lepidosiren, Ganoid fishes, perhaps Ornithorhynchus, I suspect, as stated in the "Origin," (95/7. "Origin of Species" (Edition VI.), page 83.), that they have been preserved, from inhabiting fresh-water and isolated parts of the world, in which there has been less competition and less rapid progress in Natural Selection, owing to the fewness of individuals which can inhabit small areas; and where there are few individuals variation at most must be slower. There are several allusions to this notion in the "Origin," as under Amblyopsis, the blind cave-fish (95/8. "Origin," page 112.), and under Heer (95/9. "Origin," page 83.) about Madeira plants resembling the fossil and extinct plants of Europe.

96. TO JAMES LAMONT. Down, March 5th [1860?]

I am much obliged for your long and interesting letter. You have indeed good right to speak confidently about the habits of wild birds and animals; for I should think no one beside yourself has ever sported in Spitzbergen and Southern Africa. It is very curious and interesting that you should have arrived at the conclusion that so-called "Natural Selection" had been efficient in giving their peculiar colours to our grouse. I shall probably use your authority on the similar habits of our grouse and the Norwegian species.

I am particularly obliged for your very curious fact of the effect produced by the introduction of the lowland grouse on the wildness of the grouse in your neighbourhood. It is a very striking instance of what crossing will do in affecting the character of a breed. Have you ever seen it stated in any sporting work that game has become wilder in this country? I wish I could get any sort of proof of the fact, for your explanation seems to me equally ingenious and probable. I have myself witnessed in South America a nearly parallel [case] with that which you mention in regard to the reindeer in Spitzbergen, with the Cervus campestris of La Plata. It feared neither man nor the sound of shot of a rifle, but was terrified at the sight of a man on horseback; every one in that country always riding. As you are so great a sportsman, perhaps you will kindly look to one very trifling point for me, as my neighbours here think it too absurd to notice--namely, whether the feet of birds are dirty, whether a few grains of dirt do not adhere occasionally to their feet. I especially want to know how this is in the case of birds like herons and waders, which stalk in the mud. You will guess that this relates to dispersal of seeds, which is one of my greatest difficulties. My health is very indifferent, and I am seldom able to attend the scientific meetings, but I sincerely hope that I may some time have the pleasure of meeting you.

Pray accept my cordial thanks for your very kind letter.

97. TO G.H.K. THWAITES. Down, March 21st [1860]

I thank you very sincerely for your letter, and am much pleased that you go a little way with me. You will think it presumptuous, but I am well convinced from my own mental experience that if you keep the subject at all before your mind you will ultimately go further. The present volume is a mere abstract, and there are great omissions. One main one, which I have rectified in the foreign editions, is an explanation (which has satisfied Lyell, who made the same objection with you) why many forms do not progress or advance (and I quite agree about some retrograding). I have also a MS. discussion on beauty; but do you really suppose that for instance Diatomaceae were created beautiful that man, after millions of generations, should admire them through the microscope? (97/1. Thwaites (1811-82) published several papers on the Diatomaceae ("On Conjugation in the Diatomaceae," "Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume XX., 1847, pages 9-11, 343-4; "Further Observations on the Diatomaceae," loc. cit., 1848, page 161). See "Life and Letters" II., page 292.) I should attribute most of such structures to quite unknown laws of growth; and mere repetition of parts is to our eyes one main element of beauty. When any structure is of use (and I can show what curiously minute particulars are often of highest use), I can see with my prejudiced eyes no limit to the perfection of the coadaptations which could be effected by Natural Selection. I rather doubt whether you see how far, as it seems to me, the argument for homology and embryology may be carried. I do not look at this as mere analogy. I would as soon believe that fossil shells were mere mockeries of real shells as that the same bones in the foot of a dog and wing of a bat, or the similar embryo of mammal and bird, had not a direct signification, and that the signification can be unity of descent or nothing. But I venture to repeat how much pleased I am that you go some little way with me. I find a number of naturalists do the same, and as their halting-places are various, and I must think arbitrary, I believe they will all go further. As for changing at once one's opinion, I would not value the opinion of a man who could do so; it must be a slow process. (97/2. Darwin wrote to Woodward in regard to the "Origin": "It may be a vain and silly thing to say, but I believe my book must be read twice carefully to be fully understood. You will perhaps think it by no means worth the labour.") Thank you for telling me about the Lantana (97/3. An exotic species of Lantana (Verbenaceae) grows vigorously in Ceylon, and is described as frequently making its appearance after the firing of the low-country forests (see H.H.W. Pearson, "The Botany of the Ceylon Patanas," "Journal Linn. Soc." Volume XXXIV., page 317, 1899). No doubt Thwaites' letter to Darwin referred to the spreading of the introduced Lantana, comparable to that of the cardoon in La Plata and of other plants mentioned by Darwin in the "Origin of Species" (Edition VI., page 51).), and I should at any time be most grateful for any information which you think would be of use to me. I hope that you will publish a list of all naturalised plants in Ceylon, as far as known, carefully distinguishing those confined to cultivated soils alone. I feel sure that this most important subject has been greatly undervalued.

98. TO T.H. HUXLEY

(98/1. The reference here is to the review on the "Origin of Species" generally believed to be by the late Sir R. Owen, and published in the April number of the "Edinburgh Review," 1860. Owen's biographer is silent on the subject, and prints, without comment, the following passage in an undated letter from Sedgwick to Owen: "Do you know who was the author of the article in the "Edinburgh" on the subject of Darwin's theory? On the whole, I think it very good. I once suspected that you must have had a hand in it, and I then abandoned that thought. I have not read it with any care" (Owen's "Life," Volume II., page 96).

April 9th [1860].

I never saw such an amount of misrepresentation. At page 530 (98/2. "Lasting and fruitful conclusions have, indeed, hitherto been based only on the possession of knowledge; now we are called upon to accept an hypothesis on the plea of want of knowledge. The geological record, it is averred, is so imperfect!"--"Edinburgh Review," CXI., 1860, page 530.) he says we are called on to accept the hypothesis on the plea of ignorance, whereas I think I could not have made it clearer that I admit the imperfection of the Geological Record as a great difficulty.

The quotation (98/3. "We are appealed to, or at least 'the young and rising naturalists with plastic minds,* [On the Nature of the Limbs, page 482] are adjured." It will be seen that the inverted comma after "naturalists" is omitted; the asterisk referring, in a footnote (here placed in square brackets), to page 482 of the "Origin," seems to have been incorrectly assumed by Mr. Darwin to show the close of the quotation.--Ibid., page 512.) on page 512 of the "Review" about "young and rising naturalists with plastic minds," attributed to "nature of limbs," is a false quotation, as I do not use the words "plastic minds."

At page 501 (98/4. The passage ("Origin," Edition I., page 483) begins, "But do they really believe...," and shows clearly that the author considers such a belief all but impossible.) the quotation is garbled, for I only ask whether naturalists believe about elemental atoms flashing, etc., and he changes it into that I state that they do believe.

At page 500 (98/5. "All who have brought the transmutation speculation to the test of observed facts and ascertained powers in organic life, and have published the results, usually adverse to such speculations, are set down by Mr. Darwin as 'curiously illustrating the blindness of preconceived opinion.'" The passage in the "Origin," page 482, begins by expressing surprise at the point of view of some naturalists: "They admit that a multitude of forms, which till lately they themselves thought were special creations,...have been produced by variation, but they refuse to extend the same view to other and very slightly different forms...They admit variation as a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two cases. The day will come when this will be given as a curious illustration of the blindness of preconceived opinion.") it is very false to say that I imply by "blindness of preconceived opinion" the simple belief of creation. And so on in other cases. But I beg pardon for troubling you. I am heartily sorry that in your unselfish endeavours to spread what you believe to be truth, you should have incurred so brutal an attack. (98/6. The "Edinburgh" Reviewer, referring to Huxley's Royal Institution Lecture given February 10th, 1860, "On Species and Races and their Origin," says (page 521), "We gazed with amazement at the audacity of the dispenser of the hour's intellectual amusement, who, availing himself of the technical ignorance of the majority of his auditors, sought to blind them as to the frail foundations of 'natural selection' by such illustrations as the subjoined": And then follows a critique of the lecturer's comparison of the supposed descent of the horse from the Palaeothere with that of various kinds of domestic pigeons from the Rock-pigeon.) And now I will not think any more of this false and malignant attack.

99. TO MAXWELL MASTERS. Down, April 13th [1860]

I thank you very sincerely for your two kind notes. The next time you write to your father I beg you to give him from me my best thanks, but I am sorry that he should have had the trouble of writing when ill. I have been much interested by the facts given by him. If you think he would in the least care to hear the result of an artificial cross of two sweet peas, you can send the enclosed; if it will only trouble him, tear it up. There seems to be so much parallelism in the kind of variation from my experiment, which was certainly a cross, and what Mr. Masters has observed, that I cannot help suspecting that his peas were crossed by bees, which I have seen well dusted with the pollen of the sweet pea; but then I wish this, and how hard it is to prevent one's wish biassing one's judgment!

I was struck with your remark about the Compositae, etc. I do not see that it bears much against me, and whether it does or not is of course of not the slightest importance. Although I fully agree that no definition can be drawn between monstrosities and slight variations (such as my theory requires), yet I suspect there is some distinction. Some facts lead me to think that monstrosities supervene generally at an early age; and after attending to the subject I have great doubts whether species in a state of nature ever become modified by such sudden jumps as would result from the Natural Selection of monstrosities. You cannot do me a greater service than by pointing out errors. I sincerely hope that your work on monstrosities (99/1. "Vegetable Teratology," London, 1869 (Ray Soc.).) will soon appear, for I am sure it will be highly instructive.

Now for your notes, for which let me again thank you.

1. Your conclusion about parts developed (99/2. See "Origin of Species," Edition I., page 153, on the variability of parts "developed in an extraordinary manner in any one species, compared with the other species of the same genus." See "Life and Letters," II., pages 97, 98, also Letter 33.) not being extra variable agrees with Hooker's. You will see that I have stated that the rule apparently does not hold with plants, though it ought, if true, to hold good with them.

2. I cannot now remember in what work I saw the statement about Peloria affecting the axis, but I know it was one which I thought might be trusted. I consulted also Dr. Falconer, and I think that he agreed to the truth of it; but I cannot now tell where to look for my notes. I had been much struck with finding a Laburnum tree with the terminal flowers alone in each raceme peloric, though not perfectly regular. The Pelargonium case in the "Origin" seems to point in the same direction. (99/3. "Origin of Species," Edition I., page 145.)

3. Thanks for the correction about furze: I found the seedlings just sprouting, and was so much surprised and their appearance that I sent them to Hooker; but I never plainly asked myself whether they were cotyledons or first leaves. (99/4. The trifoliate leaves of furze seedlings are not cotyledons, but early leaves: see Lubbock's "Seedlings," I., page 410.)

4. That is a curious fact about the seeds of the furze, the more curious as I found with Leguminosae that immersion in plain cold water for a very few days killed some kinds.

If at any time anything should occur to you illustrating or opposing my notions, and you have leisure to inform me, I should be truly grateful, for I can plainly see that you have wealth of knowledge.

With respect to advancement or retrogression in organisation in monstrosities of the Compositae, etc., do you not find it very difficult to define which is which?

Anyhow, most botanists seem to differ as widely as possible on this head.

100. TO J.S. HENSLOW. Down, May 8th [1860]

Very many thanks about the Elodea, which case interests me much. I wrote to Mr. Marshall (100/1. W. Marshall was the author of "Anacharis alsinastrum, a new water-weed": four letters to the "Cambridge Independent Press," reprinted as a pamphlet, 1852.) at Ely, and in due time he says he will send me whatever information he can procure.

Owen is indeed very spiteful. (100/2. Owen was believed to be the author of the article in the "Edinburgh Review," April, 1860. See Letter 98.) He misrepresents and alters what I say very unfairly. But I think his conduct towards Hooker most ungenerous: viz., to allude to his essay (Australian Flora), and not to notice the magnificent results on geographical distribution. The Londoners say he is mad with envy because my book has been talked about; what a strange man to be envious of a naturalist like myself, immeasurably his inferior! From one conversation with him I really suspect he goes at the bottom of his hidden soul as far as I do.

I wonder whether Sedgwick noticed in the "Edinburgh Review" about the "Sacerdotal revilers,"--so the revilers are tearing each other to pieces. I suppose Sedgwick will be very fierce against me at the Philosophical Society. (100/3. The meeting of the "Cambridge Phil. Soc." was held on May 7th, 1860, and fully reported in the "Cambridge Chronicle," May 19th. Sedgwick is reported to have said that "Darwin's theory is not inductive--is not based on a series of acknowledged facts, leading to a general conclusion evolved, logically out of the facts...The only facts he pretends to adduce, as true elements of proof, are the varieties produced by domestication and the artifices of crossbreeding." Sedgwick went on to speak of the vexatious multiplication of supposed species, and adds, "In this respect Darwin's theory may help to simplify our classifications, and thereby do good service to modern science. But he has not undermined any grand truth in the constancy of natural laws, and the continuity of true species.") Judging from his notice in the "Spectator," (100/4. March 24th, 1860; see "Life and Letters," II., page 297.) he will misrepresent me, but it will certainly be unintentionally done. In a letter to me, and in the above notice, he talks much about my departing from the spirit of inductive philosophy. I wish, if you ever talk on the subject to him, you would ask him whether it was not allowable (and a great step) to invent the undulatory theory of light, i.e. hypothetical undulations, in a hypothetical substance, the ether. And if this be so, why may I not invent the hypothesis of Natural Selection (which from the analogy of domestic productions, and from what we know of the struggle for existence and of the variability of organic beings, is, in some very slight degree, in itself probable) and try whether this hypothesis of Natural Selection does not explain (as I think it does) a large number of facts in geographical distribution--geological succession, classification, morphology, embryology, etc. I should really much like to know why such an hypothesis as the undulation of the ether may be invented, and why I may not invent (not that I did invent it, for I was led to it by studying domestic varieties) any hypothesis, such as Natural Selection.

Pray forgive me and my pen for running away with me, and scribbling on at such length.

I can perfectly understand Sedgwick (100/5. See "Life and Letters," II., page 247; the letter is there dated December 24th, but must, we think, have been written in November at latest.) or any one saying that Natural Selection does not explain large classes of facts; but that is very different from saying that I depart from right principles of scientific investigation.

101. TO J.S. HENSLOW. Down, May 14th [1860]

I have been greatly interested by your letter to Hooker, and I must thank you from my heart for so generously defending me, as far as you could, against my powerful attackers. Nothing which persons say hurts me for long, for I have an entire conviction that I have not been influenced by bad feelings in the conclusions at which I have arrived. Nor have I published my conclusions without long deliberation, and they were arrived at after far more study than the public will ever know of, or believe in. I am certain to have erred in many points, but I do not believe so much as Sedgwick and Co. think.

Is there any Abstract or Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society published? (101/1. Henslow's remarks are not given in the above-mentioned report in the "Cambridge Chronicle.") If so, and you could get me a copy, I should like to have one.

Believe me, my dear Henslow, I feel grateful to you on this occasion, and for the multitude of kindnesses you have done me from my earliest days at Cambridge.

102. TO C. LYELL. Down, May 22nd [1860]

Hooker has sent me a letter of Thwaites (102/1. See Letter 97.), of Ceylon, who makes exactly the same objections which you did at first about the necessity of all forms advancing, and therefore the difficulty of simple forms still existing. There was no worse omission than this in my book, and I had the discussion all ready.

I am extremely glad to hear that you intend adding new arguments about the imperfection of the Geological Record. I always feel this acutely, and am surprised that such men as Ramsay and Jukes do not feel it more.

I quite agree on insufficient evidence about mummy wheat. (102/2. See notes appended to a letter to Lyell, September 1843 (Botany).

When you can spare it, I should like (but out of mere curiosity) to see Binney on Coal marine marshes.

I once made Hooker very savage by saying that I believed the Coal plants grew in the sea, like mangroves. (102/3. See "Life and Letters," I., page 356.)

103. TO J.D. HOOKER

(103/1. This letter is of interest as containing a strong expression upon the overwhelming importance of selection.)

Down [1860].

Many thanks for Harvey's letter (103/2. W.H. Harvey had been corresponding with Sir J.D. Hooker on the "Origin of Species."), which I will keep a little longer and then return. I will write to him and try to make clear from analogy of domestic productions the part which I believe selection has played. I have been reworking my pigeons and other domestic animals, and I am sure that any one is right in saying that selection is the efficient cause, though, as you truly say, variation is the base of all. Why I do not believe so much as you do in physical agencies is that I see in almost every organism (though far more clearly in animals than in plants) adaptation, and this except in rare instances, must, I should think, be due to selection.

Do not forget the Pyrola when in flower. (103/3. In a letter to Hooker, May 22nd, 1860, Darwin wrote: "Have you Pyrola at Kew? if so, for heaven's sake observe the curvature of the pistil towards the gangway to the nectary." The fact of the stigma in insect-visited flowers being so placed that the visitor must touch it on its way to the nectar, was a point which early attracted Darwin's attention and strongly impressed him.) My blessed little Scaevola has come into flower, and I will try artificial fertilisation on it.

I have looked over Harvey's letter, and have assumed (I hope rightly) that he could not object to knowing that you had forwarded it to me.

104. TO ASA GRAY. Down, June 8th [1860]

I have to thank you for two notes, one through Hooker, and one with some letters to be posted, which was done. I anticipated your request by making a few remarks on Owen's review. (104/1. "The Edinburgh Review," April, 1860.) Hooker is so weary of reviews that I do not think you will get any hints from him. I have lately had many more "kicks than halfpence." A review in the last Dublin "Nat. Hist. Review" is the most unfair thing which has appeared,--one mass of misrepresentation. It is evidently by Haughton, the geologist, chemist and mathematician. It shows immeasurable conceit and contempt of all who are not mathematicians. He discusses bees' cells, and puts a series which I have never alluded to, and wholly ignores the intermediate comb of Melipona, which alone led me to my notions. The article is a curiosity of unfairness and arrogance; but, as he sneers at Malthus, I am content, for it is clear he cannot reason. He is a friend of Harvey, with whom I have had some correspondence. Your article has clearly, as he admits, influenced him. He admits to a certain extent Natural Selection, yet I am sure does not understand me. It is strange that very few do, and I am become quite convinced that I must be an extremely bad explainer. To recur for a moment to Owen: he grossly misrepresents and is very unfair to Huxley. You say that you think the article must be by a pupil of Owen; but no one fact tells so strongly against Owen, considering his former position at the College of Surgeons, as that he has never reared one pupil or follower. In the number just out of "Fraser's Magazine" (104/2. See "Life and Letters," II., page 314.) there is an article or review on Lamarck and me by W. Hopkins, the mathematician, who, like Haughton, despises the reasoning power of all naturalists. Personally he is extremely kind towards me; but he evidently in the following number means to blow me into atoms. He does not in the least appreciate the difference in my views and Lamarck's, as explaining adaptation, the principle of divergence, the increase of dominant groups, and the almost necessary extinction of the less dominant and smaller groups, etc.

105. TO C. LYELL. Down, June 17th [1860]

One word more upon the Deification (105/1. "If we confound 'Variation' or 'Natural Selection' with such creational laws, we deify secondary causes or immeasurably exaggerate their influence" (Lyell, "The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with Remarks on Theories on the Origin of Species by Variation," page 469, London, 1863). See Letter 131.) of Natural Selection: attributing so much weight to it does not exclude still more general laws, i.e. the ordering of the whole universe. I have said that Natural Selection is to the structure of organised beings what the human architect is to a building. The very existence of the human architect shows the existence of more general laws; but no one, in giving credit for a building to the human architect, thinks it necessary to refer to the laws by which man has appeared.

No astronomer, in showing how the movements of planets are due to gravity, thinks it necessary to say that the law of gravity was designed that the planets should pursue the courses which they pursue. I cannot believe that there is a bit more interference by the Creator in the construction of each species than in the course of the planets. It is only owing to Paley and Co., I believe, that this more special interference is thought necessary with living bodies. But we shall never agree, so do not trouble yourself to answer.

I should think your remarks were very just about mathematicians not being better enabled to judge of probabilities than other men of common-sense.

I have just got more returns about the gestation of hounds. The period differs at least from sixty-one to seventy-four days, just as I expected.

I was thinking of sending the "Gardeners' Chronicle" to you, on account of a paper by me on the fertilisation of orchids by insects (105/2. "Fertilisation of British Orchids by Insect Agency." This article in the "Gardeners' Chronicle" of June 9th, 1860, page 528, begins with a request that observations should be made on the manner of fertilisation in the bee-and in the fly-orchis.), as it involves a curious point, and as you cared about my paper on kidney beans; but as you are so busy, I will not.

106. TO C. LYELL. Down [June?] 20th [1860]

I send Blyth (106/1. See Letter 27.); it is a dreadful handwriting; the passage is on page 4. In a former note he told me he feared there was hardly a chance of getting money for the Chinese expedition, and spoke of your kindness.

Many thanks for your long and interesting letter. I wonder at, admire, and thank you for your patience in writing so much. I rather demur to Deinosaurus not having "free will," as surely we have. I demur also to your putting Huxley's "force and matter" in the same category with Natural Selection. The latter may, of course, be quite a false view; but surely it is not getting beyond our depth to first causes.

It is truly very remarkable that the gestation of hounds (106/2. In a letter written to Lyell on June 25th, 1860, the following paragraph occurs: "You need not believe one word of what I said about gestation of dogs. Since writing to you I have had more correspondence with the master of hounds, and I see his [record?] is worth nothing. It may, of course, be correct, but cannot be trusted. I find also different statements about the wolf: in fact, I am all abroad.") should vary so much, while that of man does not. It may be from multiple origin. The eggs from the Musk and the common duck take an intermediate period in hatching; but I should rather look at it as one of the ten thousand cases which we cannot explain--namely, when one part or function varies in one species and not in another.

Hooker has told me nothing about his explanation of few Arctic forms; I knew the fact before. I had speculated on what I presume, from what you say, is his explanation (106/3. "Outlines of the Distribution of Arctic Plants," J.D. Hooker, "Trans. Linn. Soc." Volume XXIII., page 251, 1862. [read June 21st, 1860.] In this paper Hooker draws attention to the exceptional character of the Greenland flora; but as regards the paucity of its species and in its much greater resemblance to the floras of Arctic Europe than to those of Arctic America, he considers it difficult to account for these facts, "unless we admit Mr. Darwin's hypotheses" (see "Origin," Edition VI., 1872, Chapter XII., page 330) of a southern migration due to the cold of the glacial period and the subsequent return of the northern types during the succeeding warmer period. Many of the Greenland species, being confined to the peninsula, "would, as it were, be driven into the sea--that is exterminated" (Hooker, op. cit., pages 253-4).); but there must have been at all times an Arctic region. I found the speculation got too complex, as it seemed to me, to be worth following out.

I have been doing some more interesting work with orchids. Talk of adaptation in woodpeckers (106/4. "Can a more striking instance of adaptation be given than that of a woodpecker for climbing trees and seizing insects in the chinks of the bark?" (Origin of Species," Edition HAVE I., page 141).), some of the orchids beat it.

I showed the case to Elizabeth Wedgwood, and her remark was, "Now you have upset your own book, for you won't persuade me that this could be effected by Natural Selection."

107. TO T.H. HUXLEY. July 20th [1860]

Many thanks for your pleasant letter. I agree to every word you say about "Fraser" and the "Quarterly." (107/1. Bishop Wilberforce's review of the "Origin" in the "Quarterly Review," July, 1860, was republished in his "Collected Essays," 1874. See "Life and Letters, II., page 182, and II., page 324, where some quotations from the review are given. For Hopkins' review in "Fraser's Magazine," June, 1860, see "Life and Letters," II., 314.) I have had some really admirable letters from Hopkins. I do not suppose he has ever troubled his head about geographical distribution, classification, morphologies, etc., and it is only those who have that will feel any relief in having some sort of rational explanation of such facts. Is it not grand the way in which the Bishop asserts that all such facts are explained by ideas in God's mind? The "Quarterly" is uncommonly clever; and I chuckled much at the way my grandfather and self are quizzed. I could here and there see Owen's hand. By the way, how comes it that you were not attacked? Does Owen begin to find it more prudent to leave you alone? I would give five shillings to know what tremendous blunder the Bishop made; for I see that a page has been cancelled and a new page gummed in.

I am indeed most thoroughly contented with the progress of opinion. From all that I hear from several quarters, it seems that Oxford did the subject great good. (107/2. An account of the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860 is given in the "Life and Letters," II., page 320, and a fuller account in the one-volume "Life of Charles Darwin," 1892, page 236. See also the "Life and Letters of T.H. Huxley," Volume I., page 179, and the amusing account of the meeting in Mr. Tuckwell's "Reminiscences of Oxford," London, 1900, page 50.) It is of enormous importance the showing the world that a few first-rate men are not afraid of expressing their opinion. I see daily more and more plainly that my unaided book would have done absolutely nothing. Asa Gray is fighting admirably in the United States. He is thorough master of the subject, which cannot be said by any means of such men as even Hopkins.

I have been thinking over what you allude to about a natural history review. (107/3. In the "Life and Letters of T.H. Huxley," Volume I., page 209, some account of the founding of the "Natural History Review" is given in a letter to Sir J.D. Hooker of July 17th, 1860. On August 2nd Mr. Huxley added: "Darwin wrote me a very kind expostulation about it, telling me I ought not to waste myself on other than original work. In reply, however, I assured him that I MUST waste myself willy-nilly, and that the 'Review' was only a save-all.") I suppose you mean really a REVIEW and not journal for original communications in Natural History. Of the latter there is now superabundance. With respect to a good review, there can be no doubt of its value and utility; nevertheless, if not too late, I hope you will consider deliberately before you decide. Remember what a deal of work you have on your shoulders, and though you can do much, yet there is a limit to even the hardest worker's power of working. I should deeply regret to see you sacrificing much time which could be given to original research. I fear, to one who can review as well as you do, there would be the same temptation to waste time, as there notoriously is for those who can speak well.

A review is only temporary; your work should be perennial. I know well that you may say that unless good men will review there will be no good reviews. And this is true. Would you not do more good by an occasional review in some well-established review, than by giving up much time to the editing, or largely aiding, if not editing, a review which from being confined to one subject would not have a very large circulation? But I must return to the chief idea which strikes me--viz., that it would lessen the amount of original and perennial work which you could do. Reflect how few men there are in England who can do original work in the several lines in which you are excellently fitted. Lyell, I remember, on analogous grounds many years ago resolved he would write no more reviews. I am an old slowcoach, and your scheme makes me tremble. God knows in one sense I am about the last man in England who ought to throw cold water on any review in which you would be concerned, as I have so immensely profited by your labours in this line.

With respect to reviewing myself, I never tried: any work of that kind stops me doing anything else, as I cannot possibly work at odds and ends of time. I have, moreover, an insane hatred of stopping my regular current of work. I have now materials for a little paper or two, but I know I shall never work them up. So I will not promise to help; though not to help, if I could, would make me feel very ungrateful to you. You have no idea during how short a time daily I am able to work. If I had any regular duties, like you and Hooker, I should do absolutely nothing in science.

I am heartily glad to hear that you are better; but how such labour as volunteer-soldiering (all honour to you) does not kill you, I cannot understand.

For God's sake remember that your field of labour is original research in the highest and most difficult branches of Natural History. Not that I wish to underrate the importance of clever and solid reviews.

108. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Sudbrook Park, Richmond, Thursday [July, 1860]

I must send you a line to say what a good fellow you are to send me so long an account of the Oxford doings. I have read it twice, and sent it to my wife, and when I get home shall read it again: it has so much interested me. But how durst you attack a live bishop in that fashion? I am quite ashamed of you! Have you no reverence for fine lawn sleeves? By Jove, you seem to have done it well. If any one were to ridicule any belief of the bishop's, would he not blandly shrug his shoulders and be inexpressibly shocked? I am very, very sorry to hear that you are not well; but am not surprised after all your self-imposed labour. I hope you will soon have an outing, and that will do you real good.

I am glad to hear about J. Lubbock, whom I hope to see soon, and shall tell him what you have said. Have you read Hopkins in the last "Fraser?"--well put, in good spirit, except soul discussion bad, as I have told him; nothing actually new, takes the weak points alone, and leaves out all other considerations.

I heard from Asa Gray yesterday; he goes on fighting like a Trojan.

God bless you!--get well, be idle, and always reverence a bishop.

109. TO J.D. DANA. Down, July 30th [1860]

I received several weeks ago your note telling me that you could not visit England, which I sincerely regretted, as I should most heartily have liked to have made your personal acquaintance. You gave me an improved, but not very good, account of your health. I should at some time be grateful for a line to tell me how you are. We have had a miserable summer, owing to a terribly long and severe illness of my eldest girl, who improves slightly but is still in a precarious condition. I have been able to do nothing in science of late. My kind friend Asa Gray often writes to me and tells me of the warm discussions on the "Origin of Species" in the United States. Whenever you are strong enough to read it, I know you will be dead against me, but I know equally well that your opposition will be liberal and philosophical. And this is a good deal more than I can say of all my opponents in this country. I have not yet seen Agassiz's attack (109/1. "Silliman's Journal," July, 1860. A passage from Agassiz's review is given by Mr. Huxley in Darwin's "Life and Letters," II., page 184.), but I hope to find it at home when I return in a few days, for I have been for several weeks away from home on my daughter's account. Prof. Silliman sent me an extremely kind message by Asa Gray that your Journal would be open to a reply by me. I cannot decide till I see it, but on principle I have resolved to avoid answering anything, as it consumes much time, often temper, and I have said my say in the "Origin." No one person understands my views and has defended them so well as A. Gray, though he does not by any means go all the way with me. There was much discussion on the subject at the British Association at Oxford, and I had many defenders, and my side seems (for I was not there) almost to have got the best of the battle. Your correspondent and my neighbour, J. Lubbock, goes on working at such spare time as he has. This is an egotistical note, but I have not seen a naturalist for months. Most sincerely and deeply do I hope that this note may find you almost recovered.

110. TO W.H. HARVEY

(110/1. See Letter 95, note. This letter was written in reply to a long one from W.H. Harvey, dated August 24th, 1860. Harvey had already published a serio-comic squib and a review, to which references are given in the "Life and Letters," II., pages 314 and 375; but apparently he had not before this time completed the reading of the "Origin.")

[August, 1860.]

I have read your long letter with much interest, and I thank you for your great liberality in sending it me. But, on reflection, I do not wish to attempt answering any part, except to you privately. Anything said by myself in defence would have no weight; it is best to be defended by others, or not at all. Parts of your letter seem to me, if I may be permitted to say so, very acute and original, and I feel it a great compliment your giving up so much time to my book. But, on the whole, I am disappointed; not from your not concurring with me, for I never expected that, and, indeed, in your remarks on Chapters XII. and XIII., you go much further with me (though a little way) than I ever anticipated, and am much pleased at the result. But on the whole I am disappointed, because it seems to me that you do not understand what I mean by Natural Selection, as shown at page 11 (110/2. Harvey speaks of the perpetuation or selection of the useful, pre-supposing "a vigilant and intelligent agent," which is very much like saying that an intelligent agent is needed to see that the small stones pass through the meshes of a sieve and the big ones remain behind.) of your letter and by several of your remarks. As my book has failed to explain my meaning, it would be hopeless to attempt it in a letter. You speak in the early part of your letter, and at page 9, as if I had said that Natural Selection was the sole agency of modification, whereas I have over and over again, ad nauseam, directly said, and by order of precedence implied (what seems to me obvious) that selection can do nothing without previous variability (see pages 80, 108, 127, 468, 469, etc.), "nothing can be effected unless favourable variations occur." I consider Natural Selection as of such high importance, because it accumulates successive variations in any profitable direction, and thus adapts each new being to its complex conditions of life. The term "selection," I see, deceives many persons, though I see no more reason why it should than elective affinity, as used by the old chemists. If I had to rewrite my book, I would use "natural preservation" or "naturally preserved." I should think you would as soon take an emetic as re-read any part of my book; but if you did, and were to erase selection and selected, and insert preservation and preserved, possibly the subject would be clearer. As you are not singular in misunderstanding my book, I should long before this have concluded that my brains were in a haze had I not found by published reviews, and especially by correspondence, that Lyell, Hooker, Asa Gray, H.C. Watson, Huxley, and Carpenter, and many others, perfectly comprehend what I mean. The upshot of your remarks at page 11 is that my explanation, etc., and the whole doctrine of Natural Selection, are mere empty words, signifying the "order of nature." As the above-named clear-headed men, who do comprehend my views, all go a certain length with me, and certainly do not think it all moonshine, I should venture to suggest a little further reflection on your part. I do not mean by this to imply that the opinion of these men is worth much as showing that I am right, but merely as some evidence that I have clearer ideas than you think, otherwise these same men must be even more muddle-headed than I am; for they have no temptation to deceive themselves. In the forthcoming September (110/3. "American Journal of Science and Arts," September 1860, "Design versus Necessity," reprinted in Asa Gray's "Darwiniana," 1876, page 62.) number of the "American Journal of Science" there is an interesting and short theological article (by Asa Gray), which gives incidentally with admirable clearness the theory of Natural Selection, and therefore might be worth your reading. I think that the theological part would interest you.

You object to all my illustrations. They are all necessarily conjectural, and may be all false; but they were the best I could give. The bear case (110/4. "Origin of Species," Edition I., page 184. See Letter 120.) has been well laughed at, and disingenuously distorted by some into my saying that a bear could be converted into a whale. As it offended persons, I struck it out in the second edition; but I still maintain that there is no especial difficulty in a bear's mouth being enlarged to any degree useful to its changing habits,--no more difficulty than man has found in increasing the crop of the pigeon, by continued selection, until it is literally as big as the whole rest of the body. If this had not been known, how absurd it would have appeared to say that the crop of a bird might be increased till it became like a balloon!

With respect to the ostrich, I believe that the wings have been reduced, and are not in course of development, because the whole structure of a bird is essentially formed for flight; and the ostrich is essentially a bird. You will see at page 182 of the "Origin" a somewhat analogous discussion. At page 450 of the second edition I have pointed out the essential distinction between a nascent and rudimentary organ. If you prefer the more complex view that the progenitor of the ostrich lost its wings, and that the present ostrich is regaining them, I have nothing to say in opposition.

With respect to trees on islands, I collected some cases, but took the main facts from Alph. De Candolle, and thought they might be trusted. My explanation may be grossly wrong; but I am not convinced it is so, and I do not see the full force of your argument of certain herbaceous orders having been developed into trees in certain rare cases on continents. The case seems to me to turn altogether on the question whether generally herbaceous orders more frequently afford trees and bushes on islands than on continents, relatively to their areas. (110/5. In the "Origin," Edition I., page 392, the author points out that in the presence of competing trees an herbaceous plant would have little chance of becoming arborescent; but on an island, with only other herbaceous plants as competitors, it might gain an advantage by overtopping its fellows, and become tree-like. Harvey writes: "What you say (page 392) of insular trees belonging to orders which elsewhere include only herbaceous species seems to me to be unsupported by sufficient evidence. You cite no particular trees, and I may therefore be wrong in guessing that the orders you allude to are Scrophularineae and Compositae; and the insular trees the Antarctic Veronicas and the arborescent Compositae of St. Helena, Tasmania, etc. But in South Africa Halleria (Scrophularineae) is often as large and woody as an apple tree; and there are several South African arborescent Compositae (Senecio and Oldenburgia). Besides, in Tasmania at least, the arborescent Composites are not found competing with herbaceous plants alone, and growing taller and taller by overtopping them...; for the most arborescent of them all (Eurybia argophylla, the Musk tree) grows...in Eucalyptus forests. And so of the South African Halleria, which is a tree among trees. What the conditions of the arborescent Gerania of the Sandwich Islands may be I am unable to say...I cannot remember any other instances, nor can I accept your explanation in any other of the cases I have cited.")

In page 4 of your letter you say you give up many book-species as separate creations: I give up all, and you infer that our difference is only in degree and not in kind. I dissent from this; for I give a distinct reason how far I go in giving up species. I look at all forms, which resemble each other homologically or embryologically, as certainly descended from the same species.

You hit me hard and fairly (110/6. Harvey writes: "You ask--were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants created as eggs or seed, or as full grown? To this it is sufficient to reply, was your primordial organism, or were your four or five progenitors created as egg, seed, or full grown? Neither theory attempts to solve this riddle, nor yet the riddle of the Omphalos." The latter point, which Mr. Darwin refuses to give up, is at page 483 of the "Origin," "and, in the case of mammals, were they created bearing the false marks of nourishment from the mother's womb?" In the third edition of the "Origin," 1861, page 517, the author adds, after the last-cited passage: "Undoubtedly these same questions cannot be answered by those who, under the present state of science, believe in the creation of a few aboriginal forms, or of some one form of life. In the sixth edition, probably with a view to the umbilicus, he writes (page 423): "Undoubtedly some of these same questions," etc., etc. From notes in Mr. Darwin's copy of the second edition it is clear that the change in the third edition was chiefly due to Harvey's letter. See Letter 115.) about my question (page 483, "Origin") about creation of eggs or young, etc., (but not about mammals with the mark of the umbilical cord), yet I still have an illogical sort of feeling that there is less difficulty in imagining the creation of an asexual cell, increasing by simple division.

Page 5 of your letter: I agree to every word about the antiquity of the world, and never saw the case put by any one more strongly or more ably. It makes, however, no more impression on me as an objection than does the astronomer when he puts on a few hundred million miles to the distance of the fixed stars. To compare very small things with great, Lingula, etc., remaining nearly unaltered from the Silurian epoch to the present day, is like the dovecote pigeons still being identical with wild Rock-pigeons, whereas its "fancy" offspring have been immensely modified, and are still being modified, by means of artificial selection.

You put the difficulty of the first modification of the first protozoon admirably. I assure you that immediately after the first edition was published this occurred to me, and I thought of inserting it in the second edition. I did not, because we know not in the least what the first germ of life was, nor have we any fact at all to guide us in our speculations on the kind of change which its offspring underwent. I dissent quite from what you say of the myriads of years it would take to people the world with such imagined protozoon. In how very short a time Ehrenberg calculated that a single infusorium might make a cube of rock! A single cube on geometrical progression would make the solid globe in (I suppose) under a century. From what little I know, I cannot help thinking that you underrate the effects of the physical conditions of life on these low organisms. But I fully admit that I can give no sort of answer to your objections; yet I must add that it would be marvellous if any man ever could, assuming for the moment that my theory is true. You beg the question, I think, in saying that Protococcus would be doomed to eternal similarity. Nor can you know that the first germ resembled a Protococcus or any other now living form.

Page 12 of your letter: There is nothing in my theory necessitating in each case progression of organisation, though Natural Selection tends in this line, and has generally thus acted. An animal, if it become fitted by selection to live the life, for instance, of a parasite, will generally become degraded. I have much regretted that I did not make this part of the subject clearer. I left out this and many other subjects, which I now see ought to have been introduced. I have inserted a discussion on this subject in the foreign editions. (110/7. In the third Edition a discussion on this point is added in Chapter IV.) In no case will any organic being tend to retrograde, unless such retrogradation be an advantage to its varying offspring; and it is difficult to see how going back to the structure of the unknown supposed original protozoon could ever be an advantage.

Page 13 of your letter: I have been more glad to read your discussion on "dominant" forms than any part of your letter. (110/8. Harvey writes: "Viewing organic nature in its widest aspect, I think it is unquestionable that the truly dominant races are not those of high, but those of low organisation"; and goes on to quote the potato disease, etc. In the third edition of the "Origin," page 56, a discussion is introduced defining the author's use of the term "dominant.") I can now see that I have not been cautious enough in confining my definition and meaning. I cannot say that you have altered my views. If Botrytis [Phytophthora] had exterminated the wild potato, a low form would have conquered a high; but I cannot remember that I have ever said (I am sure I never thought) that a low form would never conquer a high. I have expressly alluded to parasites half exterminating game-animals, and to the struggle for life being sometimes between forms as different as possible: for instance, between grasshoppers and herbivorous quadrupeds. Under the many conditions of life which this world affords, any group which is numerous in individuals and species and is widely distributed, may properly be called dominant. I never dreamed of considering that any one group, under all conditions and throughout the world, would be predominant. How could vertebrata be predominant under the conditions of life in which parasitic worms live? What good would their perfected senses and their intellect serve under such conditions? When I have spoken of dominant forms, it has been in relation to the multiplication of new specific forms, and the dominance of any one species has been relative generally to other members of the same group, or at least to beings exposed to similar conditions and coming into competition. But I daresay that I have not in the "Origin" made myself clear, and space has rendered it impossible. But I thank you most sincerely for your valuable remarks, though I do not agree with them.

About sudden jumps: I have no objection to them--they would aid me in some cases. All I can say is, that I went into the subject, and found no evidence to make me believe in jumps; and a good deal pointing in the other direction. You will find it difficult (page 14 of your letter) to make a marked line of separation between fertile and infertile crosses. I do not see how the apparently sudden change (for the suddenness of change in a chrysalis is of course largely only apparent) in larvae during their development throws any light on the subject.

I wish I could have made this letter better worth sending to you. I have had it copied to save you at least the intolerable trouble of reading my bad handwriting. Again I thank you for your great liberality and kindness in sending me your criticisms, and I heartily wish we were a little nearer in accord; but we must remain content to be as wide asunder as the poles, but without, thank God, any malice or other ill-feeling.

111. TO T.H. HUXLEY

(111/1. Dr. Asa Gray's articles in the "Atlantic Monthly," July, August, and October, 1860, were published in England as a pamphlet, and form Chapter III. in his "Darwiniana" (1876). See "Life and Letters," II., page 338. The article referred to in the present letter is that in the August number.)

Down, September 10th [1860].

I send by this post a review by Asa Gray, so good that I should like you to see it; I must beg for its return. I want to ask, also, your opinion about getting it reprinted in England. I thought of sending it to the Editor of the "Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist." in which two hostile reviews have appeared (although I suppose the "Annals" have a very poor circulation), and asking them in the spirit of fair play to print this, with Asa Gray's name, which I will take the responsibility of adding. Also, as it is long, I would offer to pay expenses.

It is very good, in addition, as bringing in Pictet so largely. (111/2. Pictet (1809-72) wrote a "perfectly fair" review opposed to the "Origin." See "Life and Letters," II., page 297.) Tell me briefly what you think.

What an astonishing expedition this is of Hooker's to Syria! God knows whether it is wise.

How are you and all yours? I hope you are not working too hard. For Heaven's sake, think that you may become such a beast as I am. How goes on the "Nat. Hist. Review?" Talking of reviews, I damned with a good grace the review in the "Athenaeum" (111/3. Review of "The Glaciers of the Alps" ("Athenaeum," September 1, 1860, page 280).) on Tyndall with a mean, scurvy allusion to you. It is disgraceful about Tyndall,--in fact, doubting his veracity.

I am very tired, and hate nearly the whole world. So good-night, and take care of your digestion, which means brain.

112. TO C. LYELL. 15, Marine Parade, Eastbourne, 26th [September 1860]

It has just occurred to me that I took no notice of your questions on extinction in St. Helena. I am nearly sure that Hooker has information on the extinction of plants (112/1. "Principles of Geology," Volume II. (Edition X., 1868), page 453. Facts are quoted from Hooker illustrating the extermination of plants in St. Helena.), but I cannot remember where I have seen it. One may confidently assume that many insects were exterminated.

By the way, I heard lately from Wollaston, who told me that he had just received eminently Madeira and Canary Island insect forms from the Cape of Good Hope, to which trifling distance, if he is logical, he will have to extend his Atlantis! I have just received your letter, and am very much pleased that you approve. But I am utterly disgusted and ashamed about the dingo. I cannot think how I could have misunderstood the paper so grossly. I hope I have not blundered likewise in its co-existence with extinct species: what horrid blundering! I am grieved to hear that you think I must work in the notes in the text; but you are so much better a judge that I will obey. I am sorry that you had the trouble of returning the Dog MS., which I suppose I shall receive to-morrow.

I mean to give good woodcuts of all the chief races of pigeons. (112/2. "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," 1868.)

Except the C. oenas (112/3. The Columba oenas of Europe roosts on trees and builds its nest in holes, either in trees or the ground ("Var. of Animals," Volume I., page 183).) (which is partly, indeed almost entirely, a wood pigeon), there is no other rock pigeon with which our domestic pigeon would cross--that is, if several exceedingly close geographical races of C. livia, which hardly any ornithologist looks at as true species, be all grouped under C. livia. (112/4. Columba livia, the Rock-pigeon. "We may conclude with confidence that all the domestic races, notwithstanding their great amount of difference, are descended from the Columba livia, including under this name certain wild races" (op. cit., Volume I., page 223).)

I am writing higgledy-piggledy, as I re-read your letter. I thought that my letter had been much wilder than yours. I quite feel the comfort of writing when one may "alter one's speculations the day after." It is beyond my knowledge to weigh ranks of birds and monotremes; in the respiratory and circulatory system and muscular energy I believe birds are ahead of all mammals.

I knew that you must have known about New Guinea; but in writing to you I never make myself civil!

After treating some half-dozen or dozen domestic animals in the same manner as I treat dogs, I intended to have a chapter of conclusions. But Heaven knows when I shall finish: I get on very slowly. You would be surprised how long it took me to pick out what seemed useful about dogs out of multitudes of details.

I see the force of your remark about more isolated races of man in old times, and therefore more in number. It seems to me difficult to weigh probabilities. Perhaps so, if you refer to very slight differences in the races: to make great differences much time would be required, and then, even at the earliest period I should have expected one race to have spread, conquered, and exterminated the others.

With respect to Falconer's series of Elephants (112/5. In 1837 Dr. Falconer and Sir Proby Cautley collected a large number of fossil remains from the Siwalik Hills. Falconer and Cautley, "Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis," 1845-49.), I think the case could be answered better than I have done in the "Origin," page 334. (112/6. "Origin of Species," Edition I., page 334. "It is no real objection to the truth of the statement that the fauna of each period as a whole is nearly intermediate in character between the preceding and succeeding faunas, that certain genera offer exceptions to the rule. For instance, mastodons and elephants, when arranged by Dr. Falconer in two series, first according to their mutual affinities and then according to their periods of existence, do not accord in arrangement. The species extreme in character are not the oldest, or the most recent; nor are those which are intermediate in character intermediate in age. But supposing for an instant, in this and other such cases, that the record of the first appearance and disappearance of the species was perfect, we have no reason to believe that forms successively produced necessarily endure for corresponding lengths of time. A very ancient form might occasionally last much longer than a form elsewhere subsequently produced, especially in the case of terrestrial productions inhabiting separated districts" (pages 334-5). The same words occur in the later edition of the "Origin" (Edition VI., page 306.) All these new discoveries show how imperfect the discovered series is, which Falconer thought years ago was nearly perfect.

I will send to-day or to-morrow two articles by Asa Gray. The longer one (now not finally corrected) will come out in the October "Atlantic Monthly," and they can be got at Trubner's. Hearty thanks for all your kindness.

Do not hurry over Asa Gray. He strikes me as one of the best reasoners and writers I ever read. He knows my book as well as I do myself.

113. TO C. LYELL. 15, Marine Parade, Eastbourne, October 3rd [1860]

Your last letter has interested me much in many ways.

I enclose a letter of Wyman's which touches on brains. Wyman is mistaken in supposing that I did not know that the Cave-rat was an American form; I made special enquiries. He does not know that the eye of the Tucotuco was carefully dissected.

With respect to reviews by A. Gray. I thought of sending the Dialogue to the "Saturday Review" in a week's time or so, as they have lately discussed Design. (113/1. "Discussion between two Readers of Darwin's Treatise on the Origin of Species, upon its Natural Theology" ("Amer. Journ. Sci." Volume XXX, page 226, 1860). Reprinted in "Darwiniana," 1876, page 62. The article begins with the following question: "First Reader--Is Darwin's theory atheistic or pantheistic? Or does it tend to atheism or pantheism?" The discussion is closed by the Second Reader, who thus sums up his views: "Wherefore we may insist that, for all that yet appears, the argument for design, as presented by the natural theologians, is just as good now, if we accept Darwin's theory, as it was before the theory was promulgated; and that the sceptical juryman, who was about to join the other eleven in an unanimous verdict in favour of design, finds no good excuse for keeping the Court longer waiting.") I have sent the second, or August, "Atlantic" article to the "Annals and Mag. of Nat. History." (113/2. "Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume VI., pages 373-86, 1860. (From the "Atlantic Monthly," August, 1860.)) The copy which you have I want to send to Pictet, as I told A. Gray I would, thinking from what he said he would like this to be done. I doubt whether it would be possible to get the October number reprinted in this country; so that I am in no hurry at all for this.

I had a letter a few weeks ago from Symonds on the imperfection of the Geological Record, less clear and forcible than I expected. I answered him at length and very civilly, though I could hardly make out what he was driving at. He spoke about you in a way which it did me good to read.

I am extremely glad that you like A. Gray's reviews. How generous and unselfish he has been in all his labour! Are you not struck by his metaphors and similes? I have told him he is a poet and not a lawyer.

I should altogether doubt on turtles being converted into land tortoises on any one island. Remember how closely similar tortoises are on all continents, as well as islands; they must have all descended from one ancient progenitor, including the gigantic tortoise of the Himalaya.

I think you must be cautious in not running the convenient doctrine that only one species out of very many ever varies. Reflect on such cases as the fauna and flora of Europe, North America, and Japan, which are so similar, and yet which have a great majority of their species either specifically distinct, or forming well-marked races. We must in such cases incline to the belief that a multitude of species were once identically the same in all the three countries when under a warmer climate and more in connection; and have varied in all the three countries. I am inclined to believe that almost every species (as we see with nearly all our domestic productions) varies sufficiently for Natural Selection to pick out and accumulate new specific differences, under new organic and inorganic conditions of life, whenever a place is open in the polity of nature. But looking to a long lapse of time and to the whole world, or to large parts of the world, I believe only one or a few species of each large genus ultimately becomes victorious, and leaves modified descendants. To give an imaginary instance: the jay has become modified in the three countries into (I believe) three or four species; but the jay genus is not, apparently, so dominant a group as the crows; and in the long run probably all the jays will be exterminated and be replaced perhaps by some modified crows.

I merely give this illustration to show what seems to me probable.

But oh! what work there is before we shall understand the genealogy of organic beings!

With respect to the Apteryx, I know not enough of anatomy; but ask Dr. F. whether the clavicle, etc., do not give attachment to some of the muscles of respiration. If my views are at all correct, the wing of the Apteryx (113/3. "Origin of Species," Edition VI., page 140.) cannot be (page 452 of the "Origin") a nascent organ, as these wings are useless. I dare not trust to memory, but I know I found the whole sternum always reduced in size in all the fancy and confined pigeons relatively to the same bones in the wild Rock-pigeon: the keel was generally still further reduced relatively to the reduced length of the sternum; but in some breeds it was in a most anomalous manner more prominent. I have got a lot of facts on the reduction of the organs of flight in the pigeon, which took me weeks to work out, and which Huxley thought curious.

I am utterly ashamed, and groan over my handwriting. It was "Natural Preservation." Natural persecution is what the author ought to suffer. It rejoices me that you do not object to the term. Hooker made the same remark that it ought to have been "Variation and Natural Selection." Yet with domestic productions, when selection is spoken of, variation is always implied. But I entirely agree with your and Hooker's remark.

Have you begun regularly to write your book on the antiquity of man? (113/4. Published in 1863.)

I do NOT agree with your remark that I make Natural Selection do too much work. You will perhaps reply that every man rides his hobby-horse to death; and that I am in the galloping state.

114. TO C. LYELL. 15, Marine Parade, Eastbourne, Friday 5th [October, 1860]

I have two notes to thank you for, and I return Wollaston. It has always seemed to me rather strange that Forbes, Wollaston and Co. should argue, from the presence of allied, and not identical species in islands, for the former continuity of land.

They argue, I suppose, from the species being allied in different regions of the same continent, though specifically distinct. But I think one might on the creative doctrine argue with equal force in a directly reverse manner, and say that, as species are so often markedly distinct, yet allied, on islands, all our continents existed as islands first, and their inhabitants were first created on these islands, and since became mingled together, so as not to be so distinct as they now generally are on islands.

115. TO H.G. BRONN. Down, October 5th [1860]

I ought to apologise for troubling you, but I have at last carefully read your excellent criticisms on my book. (115/1. Bronn added critical remarks to his German translation of the "Origin": see "Life and Letters," II., page 279.) I agree with much of them, and wholly with your final sentence. The objections and difficulties which may be urged against my view are indeed heavy enough almost to break my back, but it is not yet broken! You put very well and very fairly that I can in no one instance explain the course of modification in any particular instance. I could make some sort of answer to your case of the two rats; and might I not turn round and ask him who believes in the separate creation of each species, why one rat has a longer tail or shorter ears than another? I presume that most people would say that these characters were of some use, or stood in some connection with other parts; and if so, Natural Selection would act on them. But as you put the case, it tells well against me. You argue most justly against my question, whether the many species were created as eggs (115/2. See Letter 110.) or as mature, etc. I certainly had no right to ask that question. I fully agree that there might have been as well a hundred thousand creations as eight or ten, or only one. But then, on the view of eight or ten creations (i.e. as many as there are distinct types of structure) we can on my view understand the homological and embryological resemblance of all the organisms of each type, and on this ground almost alone I disbelieve in the innumerable acts of creation. There are only two points on which I think you have misunderstood me. I refer only to one Glacial period as affecting the distribution of organic beings; I did not wish even to allude to the doubtful evidence of glacial action in the Permian and Carboniferous periods. Secondly, I do not believe that the process of development has always been carried on at the same rate in all different parts of the world. Australia is opposed to such belief. The nearly contemporaneous equal development in past periods I attribute to the slow migration of the higher and more dominant forms over the whole world, and not to independent acts of development in different parts. Lastly, permit me to add that I cannot see the force of your objection, that nothing is effected until the origin of life is explained: surely it is worth while to attempt to follow out the action of electricity, though we know not what electricity is.

If you should at any time do me the favour of writing to me, I should be very much obliged if you would inform me whether you have yourself examined Brehm's subspecies of birds; for I have looked through some of his writings, but have never met an ornithologist who believed in his [illegible]. Are these subspecies really characteristic of certain different regions of Germany?

Should you write, I should much like to know how the German edition sells.

116. TO J.S. HENSLOW. October 26th [1860]

Many thanks for your note and for all the trouble about the seeds, which will be most useful to me next spring. On my return home I will send the shillings. (116/1. Shillings for the little girls in Henslow's parish who collected seeds for Darwin.) I concluded that Dr. Bree had blundered about the Celts. I care not for his dull, unvarying abuse of me, and singular misrepresentation. But at page 244 he in fact doubts my deliberate word, and that is the act of a man who has not the soul of a gentleman in him. Kingsley is "the celebrated author and divine" (116/2. "Species not Transmutable," by C.R. Bree. After quoting from the "Origin," Edition II., page 481, the words in which a celebrated author and divine confesses that "he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms, etc.," Dr. Bree goes on: "I think we ought to have had the name of this divine given with this remarkable statement. I confess that I have not yet fully made up my mind that any divine could have ever penned lines so fatal to the truths he is called upon to teach.") whose striking sentence I give in the second edition with his permission. I did not choose to ask him to let me use his name, and as he did not volunteer, I had of course no choice. (116/3. We are indebted to Mr. G.W. Prothero for calling our attention to the following striking passage from the works of a divine of this period:--"Just a similar scepticism has been evinced by nearly all the first physiologists of the day, who have joined in rejecting the development theories of Lamarck and the 'Vestiges'...Yet it is now acknowledged under the high sanction of the name of Owen that 'creation' is only another name for our ignorance of the mode of production...while a work has now appeared by a naturalist of the most acknowledged authority, Mr. Darwin's masterly volume on the 'Origin of Species,' by the law of 'natural selection,' which now substantiates on undeniable grounds the very principle so long denounced by the first naturalists--the origination of new species by natural causes: a work which must soon bring about an entire revolution of opinion in favour of the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature."--Prof. Baden Powell's "Study of the Evidences of Christianity," "Essays and Reviews," 7th edition, 1861 (pages 138, 139).)

Dr. Freke has sent me his paper, which is far beyond my scope--something like the capital quiz in the "Anti-Jacobin" on my grandfather, which was quoted in the "Quarterly Review."