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With respect to the races, one of my best chances of truth has broken down from the impossibility of getting facts. I have one good speculative line, but a man must have entire credence in Natural Selection before he will even listen to it. Psychologically, I have done scarcely anything. Unless, indeed, expression of countenance can be included, and on that subject I have collected a good many facts, and speculated, but I do not suppose I shall ever publish, but it is an uncommonly curious subject.

A few days later he wrote again to the same correspondent: "What a grand immense benefit you conferred on me by getting Murray to publish my book. I never till to-day realised that it was getting widely distributed; for in a letter from a lady to-day to E., she says she heard a man enquiring for it at the Railway Station !!! at Waterloo Bridge; and the bookseller said that he had none till the new edition was out. The bookseller said he had not read it, but had heard it was a very remarkable book!!!"

C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Down, 14th [January, 1860].

. I heard from Lyell this morning, and he tells me a piece of news. You are a good-for-nothing man; her you are slaving yourself to death with hardly a minute to spare, and you must write a review on my book! I thought it a very good one, and was so much struck with it, that I sent it to Lyell. But I assumed, as a matter of course, that it was Lindley's. Now that I know it is yours, I have re-read it, and my kind and good friend, it has warmed my heart with all the honourable and noble things you say of me and it. I was a good deal surprised at Lindley hitting on some of the remarks, but I never dreamed of you. I admired it chiefly as so well adapted to tell on the readers of the Gardeners' Chronicle; but now I admire it in another spirit. Farewell, with hearty thanks.

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Asa Gray to J. D. Hooker. Cambridge, Mass.,

January 5th, 1860.

MY DEAR HOOKER,-Your last letter, which reached me just before Christmas, has got mislaid during the upturnings in my

* Gardeners' Chronicle, 1860. Sir J. D. Hooker took the line of complete impartiality, so as not to commit the editor, Lindley.

study which take place at that season, and has not yet been discovered. I should be very sorry to lose it, for there were in it some botanical mems. which I had not secured.

The principal part of your letter was high laudation of Darwin's book.

Well, the book has reached me, and I finished its careful perusal four days ago; and I freely say that your laudation is not out of place.

It is done in a masterly manner. It might well have taken twenty years to produce it. It is crammed full of most interesting matter-thoroughly digested-well expressedclose, cogent, and taken as a system it makes out a better case than I had supposed possible.

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Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of it. He says it is poor-very poor !! (entre nous). The fact [is] he is very much annoyed by it, . . . . and I do not wonder at it. To bring all ideal systems within the domain of science, and give good physical or natural explanations of all his capital points, is as bad as to have Forbes take the glacier materials . . . and give scientific explanation of all the phenomena.

Tell Darwin all this. I will write to him when I get a chance. As I have promised, he and you shall have fair-play here. . . . I must myself write a review of Darwin's book for Silliman's Journal (the more so that I suspect Agassiz means to come out upon it) for the next (March) number, and I am now setting about it (when I ought to be every moment working the Exploring] Expedition Composite, which I know far more about). And really it is no easy job as you may well imagine.

I doubt if I shall please you altogether. I know I shall not plea-e Agassiz at all. I hear another reprint is in the Press, and the book will excite much attention here, and some controversy.

...

C. D. to Asa Gray. Down, January 28th [1860].

MY DEAR GRAY,-Hooker has forwarded to me your letter to him; and I cannot express how deeply it has gratified me. To

On Jan. 23 Gray wrote to Darwin: "It naturally happens that my review of your book does not exhibit anything like the full force of the impression the book has made upon me. Under the circumstances I suppose I do your theory more good here, by bespeaking for it a fair and favourable consideration, and by standing non-committed as to its full

receive the approval of a man whom one has long sincerely respected, and whose judgment and knowledge are most universally admitted, is the highest reward an author can possibly wish for; and I thank you heartily for your most kind expressions.

I have been absent from home for a few days, and so could not earlier answer your letter to me of the 10th of January. You have been extremely kind to take so much trouble and interest about the edition. It has been a mistake of my publisher not thinking of sending over the sheets. I had entirely and utterly forgotten your offer of receiving the sheets as printed off. But I must not blame my publisher, for had I remembered your most kind offer I feel pretty sure I should not have taken advantage of it; for I never dreamed of my book being so successful with general readers: I believe I should have laughed at the idea of sending the sheets to America.*

After much consideration, and on the strong advice of Lyell and others, I have resolved to leave the present book as it is (excepting correcting errors, or here and there inserting short sentences), and to use all my strength, which is but little, to bring out the first part (forming a separate volume, with index, &c.) of the three volumes which will make my bigger work; so that I am very unwilling to take up time in making corrections for an American edition. I enclose a list of a few corrections in the second reprint, which you will have received by this time complete, and I could send four or five corrections or additions of equally small importance, or rather of equal brevity. I also intend to write a short preface with a brief history of the subject. These I will set about, as they must some day be done, and I will send them to you in a short time -the few corrections first, and the preface afterwards, unless I hear that you have given up all idea of a separate edition. You will then be able to judge whether it is worth having the new edition with your review prefixed. Whatever be the

conclusions, than I should if I announced myself a convert; nor could I say the latter, with truth.

"What seems to me the weakest point in the book is the attempt to account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, &c., by natural selection. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian."

In a letter to Mr. Murray, 1860, my father wrote:-"I am amused by Asa Gray's account of the excitement my book has made amongst naturalists in the U. States. Agassiz has denounced it in a newspaper, but yet in such terms that it is in fact a fine advertisement!" This seems to refer to a lecture given before the Mercantile Library Association.

nature of your review, I assure you I should feel it a great honour to have my book thus preceded.

C. D. to C. Lyell. Down [February 15th, 1860].

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I am perfectly convinced (having read it this morning) that the review in the Annals* is by Wollaston; no one else in the world would have used so many parentheses. I have written to him, and told him that the "pestilent fellow thanks him for his kind manner of speaking about him. I have also told him that he would be pleased to hear that the Bishop of Oxford says it is the most unphilosophical † work he ever read. The review seems to me clever, and only misinterprets me in a few places. Like all hostile men, he passes over the explanation given of Classification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs, &c. I read Wallace's paper in MS., and thought it admirably good; he does not know that he has been anticipated about the depth of intervening sea determining distribution. . . . The most curious point in the paper seems to me that about the African character of the Celebes productions, but I should require further confirmation. . .

Henslow is staying here; I have had some talk with him; he is in much the same state as Bunbury,§ and will go a very little way with us, but brings up no real argument against going further. He also shudders at the eye! It is really curious (and perhaps is an argument in our favour) how differently different opposers view the subject. Henslow used to rest his opposition on the imperfection of the Geological Record, but he now thinks nothing of this, and says I have got well out of

Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist. third series, vol. v. p. 132. My father has obviously taken the expression "pestilent" from the following passage (p. 138): "But who is this Nature, we have a right to ask, who has such tremendous power, and to whose efficiency such marvellous performances are ascribed? What are her image and attributes, when dragged from her wordy lurking-place? Is she ought but a pestilent abstraction, like dust cast in our eyes to obscure the workings of an Intelligent First Cause of all?" The reviewer pays a tribute to my father's candour" so manly and outspoken as almost to cover a multitude of sins.'" The parentheses (to which allusion is made above) are so frequent as to give a characteristic appearance to Mr. Wollaston's pages.

Another version of the words is given by Lyell, to whom they were spoken, viz. "the most illogical book ever written."-Life and Letters of Sir C. Lyell, vol. ii. p. 358.

"On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago."--Linn. Soc. Journ. 1860.

§ The late Sir Charles Bunbury, well known as a Palæo-botanist.

it; I wish I could quite agree with him. Baden Powell says he never read anything so conclusive as my statement about the eye!! A stranger writes to me about sexual selection, and regrets that I boggle about such a trifle as the brush of hair on the male turkey, and so on. As L. Jenyns has a really philosophical mind, and as you say you like to see everything, I send an old letter of his. In a later letter to Henslow, which I have seen, he is more candid than any opposer I have heard of, for he says, though he cannot go so far as I do, yet he can give no good reason why he should not. It is funny how each man draws his own imaginary line at which to halt. It reminds me so vividly [of] what I was told * about you when I first commenced geology-to believe a little, but on no account to believe all.

Ever yours affectionately.

With regard to the attitude of the more liberal representatives of the Church, the following letter from Charles Kingsley is of interest:

C. Kingsley to C. Darwin. Eversley Rectory, Winchfield, November 18th, 1859.

DEAR SIR,-I have to thank you for the unexpected honour of your book. That the Naturalist whom, of all naturalists living, I most wish to know and to learn from, should have sent a scientist like me his book, encourages me at least to observe more carefully, and think more slowly.

I am so poorly (in brain), that I fear I cannot read your book just now as I ought. All I have seen of it awes me; both with the heap of facts and the prestige of your name, and also with the clear intuition, that if you be right, I must give up much that I have believed and written.

In that I care little. Let God be true, and every man a liar! Let us know what is, and, as old Socrates has it, reσdai Tŵ λóyw -follow up the villainous shifty fox of an argument, into whatsoever unexpected bogs and brakes he lead us, may if we do but run into him at last.

From two common superstitions, at least, I shall be free while judging of your book:

(1.) I have long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species.

* By Professor Henslow.

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