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."

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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.)

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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!"...

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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.)

LETTER 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.)

LETTER 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!

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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!

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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?"

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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.

LETTER 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