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suddenly withdrawn, makes?
I have not written since receiving your note of April 20th, in which
you confided in me and told me your prospects. I heartily wish they were
better, and especially more certain; but with your abilities and powers
of writing it will be strange if you cannot add what little you require
for your income. I am glad that you have got a retired and semi-rural
situation. What a grand ending you give to your book, contrasting
civilisation and wild life! I quite regret that I have finished it:
every evening it was a real treat to me to have my half-hour in the
grand Amazonian forest, and picture to myself your vivid descriptions.
There are heaps of facts of value to me in a natural history point
of view. It was a great misfortune that you were prevented giving the
discussion on species. But you will, I hope, be able to give your views
and facts somewhere else.
LETTER 168. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 15th [1863].
Your letter received this morning interested me more than even most of
your letters, and that is saying a good deal. I must scribble a little
on several points. About Lyell and species--you put the whole case, I
do believe, when you say that he is "half-hearted and whole-headed."
(168/1. Darwin's disappointment with the cautious point of view taken
up by Lyell in the "Antiquity of Man" is illustrated in the "Life and
Letters," III., pages 11, 13. See also Letter 164, page 239.) I wrote
to A. Gray that, when I saw such men as Lyell and he refuse to judge,
it put me in despair, and that I sometimes thought I should prefer that
Lyell had judged against modification of species rather than profess
inability to decide; and I left him to apply this to himself. I am
heartily rejoiced to hear that you intend to try to bring L. and F.
(168/2. Falconer claimed that Lyell had not "done justice to the part he
took in resuscitating the cave question." See "Life and Letters," III.,
page 14.) together again; but had you not better wait till they are a
little cooled? You will do Science a real good service. Falconer never
forgave Lyell for taking the Purbeck bones from him and handing them
over to Owen.
With respect to island floras, if I understand rightly, we differ almost
solely how plants first got there. I suppose that at long intervals,
from as far back as later Tertiary periods to the present time, plants
occasionally arrived (in some cases, perhaps, aided by different
currents from existing currents and by former islands), and that these
old arrivals have survived little modified on the islands, but have
become greatly modified or become extinct on the continent. If I
understand, you believe that all islands were formerly united to
continents, and then received all their plants and none since; and that
on the islands they have undergone less extinction and modification than
on the continent. The number of animal forms on islands, very closely
allied to those on continents, with a few extremely distinct and
anomalous, does not seem to me well to harmonise with your supposed view
of all having formerly arrived or rather having been left together on
the island.
LETTER 169. TO ASA GRAY. Down, May 31st [1863?].
I was very glad to receive your review (169/1. The review on De
Candolle's work on the Oaks (A. Gray's "Scientific Papers," I., page
130).) of De Candolle a week ago. It seems to me excellent, and you
speak out, I think, more plainly in favour of derivation of species than
hitherto, though doubtfully about Natural Selection. Grant the first,
I am easy about the second. Do you not consider such cases as all the
orchids next thing to a demonstration against Heer's view of species
arising suddenly by monstrosities?--it is impossible to imagine so many
co-adaptations being formed all by a chance blow. Of course creationists
would cut the enigma.
LETTER 170. TO T.H. HUXLEY. June 27th [1863?]
What are you doing now? I have never yet got hold of the "Edinburgh
Review," in which I hear you are well abused. By the way, I heard
lately from Asa Gray that Wyman was delighted at "Man's Place." (170/1.
"Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," by T.H. Huxley, 1863.) I
wonder who it is who pitches weakly, but virulently into you, in the
"Anthropological Review." How quiet Owen seems! I do at last begin to
believe that he will ultimately fall in public estimation. What nonsense
he wrote in the "Athenaeum" (170/2. "Athenaeum," March 28th, 1863. See
"Life and Letters," III., page 17.) on Heterogeny! I saw in his Aye-Aye
(170/3. See Owen in the "Trans. Zool. Soc." Volume V. The sentence
referred to seems to be the following (page 95): "We know of no changes
in progress in the Island of Madagascar, necessitating a special quest
of wood-boring larvae by small quadrupeds of the Lemurine or Sciurine
types of organisation.') paper (I think) that he sneers at the manner in
which he supposes that we should account for the structure of its
limbs; and asks how we know that certain insects had increased in the
Madagascar forests. Would it not be a good rebuff to ask him how he
knows there were trees at all on the leafless plains of La Plata for his
Mylodons to tear down? But I must stop, for if I once begin about [him]
there will be no end. I was disappointed in the part about species in
Lyell. (170/4. Lyell's "Antiquity of Man." See "Life and Letters," III.,
page 11.) You and Hooker are the only two bold men. I have had a bad
spring and summer, almost constantly very unwell; but I am crawling on
in my book on "Variation under Domestication.")
LETTER 171. TO C. LYELL. Down, August 14th [1863].
Have you seen Bentham's remarks on species in his address to the Linnean
Society? (171/1. Presidential address before the Linnean Society by G.
Bentham ("Journ. Proc. Linn. Soc." Volume VII., page xi., 1864).) they
have pleased me more than anything I have read for some time. I have no
news, for I have not seen a soul for months, and have had a bad
spring and summer, but have managed to do a good deal of work. Emma is
threatening me to take me to Malvern, and perhaps I shall be compelled,
but it is a horrid waste of time; you must have enjoyed North Wales, I
should think, it is to me a most glorious country...
If you have not read Bates' book (171/2. Henry Walter Bates, "The
Naturalist on the River Amazons," 2 volumes, London, 1863. In a letter
to Bates, April 18th, 1863, Darwin writes, "It is the best work of
natural history travels ever published in England" ("Life and Letters,"
II., page 381.), I think it would interest you. He is second only to
Humboldt in describing a tropical forest. (171/3. Quoted in "Life and
Letters," II., page 381.). Talking of reading, I have never got the
"Edinburgh" (171/4. The "Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of
Man," by Sir Charles Lyell, and works by other authors reviewed in the
"Edinburgh Review." Volume CXVIII., July 1863. The writer sums up his
criticism as follows: "Glancing at the work of Sir Charles |