now staggered to any moderate extent, you will come more and more round, the longer you keep the subject at all before your mind. I remember well how many long years it was before I could look into the face of some of the difficulties and not feel quite abashed. I fairly struck my colours before the case of neuter insects.*

I suppose that I am a very slow thinker, for you would be surprised at the number of years it took me to see clearly what some of the problems were which had to be solved, such as the necessity of the principle of divergence of character, the extinction of intermediate varieties, on a continuous area, with graduated conditions; the double problem of sterile first crosses and sterile hybrids, &c. &c.

Looking back, I think it was more difficult to see what the problems were than to solve them, so far as I have succeeded in doing, and this seems to me rather curious. Well, good or bad, my work, thank God, is over; and hard work, I can assure you, I have had, and much work which has never borne fruit. You can see, by the way I am scribbling, that I have an idle and rainy afternoon. I was not able to start for Ilkley yesterday as I was too unwell; but I hope to get there on Tuesday or Wednesday. Do, I beg you, when you have finished my book and thought a little over it, let me hear from you. Never mind and pitch into me, if you think it requisite ; some future day, in London possibly, you may give me a few criticisms in detail, that is, if you have scribbled any remarks on the margin, for the chance of a second edition.

Murray has printed 1250 copies, which seems to me rather too large an edition, but I hope he will not lose.

I make as much fuss about my book as if it were my first. Forgive me, and believe me, my dear Lyell, Yours most sincerely.

The book was at last finished and printed, and he wrote to Mr. Murray :

Ilkley, Yorkshire [1859]. MY DEAR SIR,-I have received your kind note and the copy; I am infinitely pleased and proud at the appearance of my child.

*Origin of Species, 6th edition, vol. ii. p. 357. "But with the working ant we have an insect differing greatly from its parents, yet absolutely sterile, so that it could never have transmitted successively acquired modifications of structure or instinct to its progeny. It may well be asked how is it possible to reconcile this case with the theory of natural selection?"

I quite agree to all you propose about price. But you are really too generous about the, to me, scandalously heavy corrections. Are you not acting unfairly towards yourself? Would it not be better at least to share the £72 88. ? I shall be fully satisfied, for I had no business to send, though quite unintentionally and unexpectedly, such badly composed MS. to the printers.

Thank you for your kind offer to distribute the copies to my friends and assisters as soon as possible. Do not trouble yourself much about the foreigners, as Messrs. Williams and Norgate have most kindly offered to do their best, and they are accustomed to send to all parts of the world.

I will pay for my copies whenever you like. I am so glad that you were so good as to undertake the publication of my book.

My dear Sir, yours very sincerely,

CHARLES DARWIN.

The further history of the book is given in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XII.

THE PUBLICATION OF THE " ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'

"Remember that your verdict will probably have more infiuence than my book in deciding whether such views as I hold will be admitted or rejected at present; in the future I cannot doubt about their admittance, and our posterity will marvel as much about the current belief as we do about fossil shells having been thought to have been created as we now see them."-From a letter to Lyell, Sept. 1859.

OCTOBER 3RD, 1859, TO DECEMBER 31ST, 1859.

UNDER the date of October 1st, 1859, in my father's Diary occurs the entry :-"Finished proofs (thirteen months and ten days) of Abstract on Origin of Species; 1250 copies printed. The first edition was published on November 24th, and all copies sold first day."

In October he was, as we have seen in the last chapter, at Ilkley, near Leeds: there he remained with his family until December, and on the 9th of that month he was again at Down. The only other entry in the Diary for this year is as follows:-" During end of November and beginning of December, employed in correcting for second edition of 3000 copies; multitude of letters."

The first and a few of the subsequent letters refer to proofsheets, and to early copies of the Origin which were sent to friends before the book was published.

C. Lyell to C. Darwin. October 3rd, 1859.

MY DEAR DARWIN,-I have just finished your volume, and right glad I am that I did my best with Hooker to persuade you to publish it without waiting for a time which probably could never have arrived, though you lived till the age of a hundred, when you had prepared all your facts on which you ground so many grand generalizations.

It is a splendid case of close reasoning, and long substantial argument throughout so many pages; the condensation immense, too great perhaps for the uninitiated, but an effective and

important preliminary statement, which will admit, even before your detailed proofs appear, of some occasional useful exemplification, such as your pigeons and cirripedes, of which you make such excellent use.

I mean that, when, as I fully expect, a new edition is soon called for, you may here and there insert an actual case to relieve the vast number of abstract propositions. So far as I am concerned, I am so well prepared to take your statements of facts for granted, that I do not think the " pièces justificatives" when published will make much difference, and I have long seen most clearly that if any concession is made, all that you claim in your concluding pages will follow. It is this which has made me so long hesitate, always feeling that the case of Man and his races, and of other animals, and that of plants is one and the same, and that if a "vera causa" be admitted for one, instead of a purely unknown and imaginary one, such as the word "Creation," all the consequences must follow.

I fear I have not time to-day, as I am just leaving this place to indulge in a variety of comments, and to say how much I was delighted with Oceanic Islands-Rudimentary Organs-Embryology-the genealogical key to the Natural System, Geographical Distribution, and if I went on I should be copying the heads of all your chapters. But I will say a word of the Recapitulation, in case some slight alteration, or, at least, omission of a word or two be still possible in that.

In the first place, at p. 480, it cannot surely be said that the most eminent naturalists have rejected the view of the mutability of species? You do not mean to ignore G. St. Hilaire and Lamarck. As to the latter, you may say, that in regard to animals you substitute natural selection for volition to a certain considerable extent, but in his theory of the changes of plants he could not introduce volition; he may, no doubt, have laid an undue comparative stress on changes in physical conditions, and too little on those of contending organisms. He at least was for the universal mutability of species and for a genealogical link between the first and the present. The men of his school also appealed to domesticated varieties. (Do you mean living naturalists?)

*

The first page of this most important summary gives the adversary an advantage, by putting forth so abruptly and crudely such a startling objection as the formation of "the

In his next letter to Lyell my father writes: "The omission of 'living' before 'eminent' naturalists was a dreadful blunder." In the first edition, as published, the blunder is corrected by the addition of the word "living."

eye," not by means analogous to man's reason, or rather by some power immeasurably superior to human reason, but by superinduced variation like those of which a cattle-breeder avails himself. Pages would be required thus to state an objection and remove it. It would be better, as you wish to persuade, to say nothing. Leave out several sentences, and in a future edition bring it out more fully.

But these are small matters, mere spots on the sun. Your comparison of the letters retained in words, when no longer wanted for the sound, to rudimentary organs is excellent, as both are truly genealogical.

...

You enclose your sheets in old MS., so the Post Office very properly charge them, as letters, 2d. extra. I wish all their fines on MS. were worth as much. I paid 48. 6d. for such wash the other day from Paris, from a man who can prove 300 deluges in the valley of Seine.

With my hearty congratulations to you on your grand work, believe me,

Ever very affectionately yours.

C. D. to L. Agassiz.† Down, November 11th [1859].

MY DEAR SIR,-I have ventured to send you a copy cy book (as yet only an abstract) on the Origin of Species. As the conclusions at which I have arrived on several points differ so widely from yours, I have thought (should you at any time read my volume) that you might think that I had sent it to you out of a spirit of defiance or bravado; but I assure you that I act under a wholly different frame of mind. I hope that

Darwin wrote to Asa Gray in 1860:-"The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder, but when I think of the fine known gradations, my reason tells me I ought to conquer the cold shudder."

† Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, born at Mortier, on the lake of Morat in Switzerland, on May 28th, 1807. He emigrated to America in 1846, where he spent the rest of his life, and died Dec. 14th, 1873. His Life, written by his widow, was published in 1885. The following extract from a letter to Agassiz (1850) is worth giving, as showing how my father regarded him, and it may be added that his cordial feeling towards the great American naturalist remained strong to the end of his life

"I have seldom been more deeply gratified than by receiving your most kind present of Lake Superior. I had heard of it, and had much wished to read it, but I confess that it was the very great honour of having in my possession a work with your autograph as a presentation copy, that has given me such lively and sincere pleasure. I cordially thank you for it. I have begun to read it with uncommon interest, which I see will increase as I go on."