JET. 49.] TO CHARLES DARWIN. 457 



I hope next week to get printed sheets of my review 

 from New Haven, and send them to you, and will ask 

 you to pass them on to Dr. Hooker. 



To fulfill your request, I ought to tell you what I 

 think the weakest, and what the best, part of your 

 book. But this is not easy, nor to be done in a word 

 or two. The best part, I think, is the whole, that is, 

 its plan and treatment, the vast amount of facts and 

 acute inferences handled as if you had a perfect mas- 

 tery of them. I do not think twenty years too much 

 time to produce such a book in. 



Style clear and good, but now and then wants revi- 

 sion for little matters (p. 97, self -fertilizes itself, etc.). 



Then your candor is worth everything to your cause. 

 It is refreshing to find a person with a new theory 

 who frankly confesses that he finds difficulties, insur- 

 mountable at least for the present. I know some 

 people who never have any difficulties to speak of. 



The moment I understood your premises, I felt sure 

 you had a real foundation to hold on. Well, if one 

 admits your premises, I do not see how he is to stop 

 short of your conclusions, as a probable hypothesis at 

 least. 



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 favorable con- 

 sideration, and by standing noncommitted as to its 

 full conclusion, than I should if I announced myself a 

 convert ; nor could I say the latter, with truth. 



Well, what seems to me the weakest point in the 

 book is the attempt to account for the formation of 

 organs, the making of eyes, etc., by natural selection. 

 Some of this reads quite Lamarckian. 



