352 



THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' 



[i860. 



C. Danviu to C. Lyell. 



Down, November 24th [i860]. 



My DEAR LYELL, I thank you much for your letter. I 

 had got to take pleasure in thinking how I could best snub 

 my reviewers ; but I was determined, in any case, to follow 

 your advice, and, before I had got to the end of your letter, I 

 was convinced of the wisdom of your advice.* What an 

 advantage it is to me to have such friends as you. I shall 

 follow every hint in your letter exactly. 



I have just heard from Murray ; he says he sold 700 copies 

 at his sale, and that he has not half the number to supply ; so 

 that I must begin at once, j . . . . 



P.S. I must tell you one little fact which has pleased me. 

 You may remember that I adduce electrical organs of fish as 

 one of the greatest difficulties which have occurred to me, and 



notices the passage in a singularly disingenuous spirit. 



Well, McDonnell, of Dublin (a first-rate man), writes to me 

 that he felt the difficulty of the whole case as overwhelming 

 against me. Not only are the fishes which have electric 

 organs very remote in scale, but the organ is near the head in 

 some, and near the tail in others, and supplied by wholly 

 different nerves. It seems impossible that there could be any 

 transition. Some friend, who is much opposed to me, seems 

 to have crowed over McDonnell, who reports that he said to 

 himself, that if Darwin is right, there must be homologous 

 organs both near the head and tail in other non-electric fish. 



* "I get on slowly with my new 

 edition. I find that your advice 

 was excellent. I can answer all 

 reviews, without any direct notice 

 of them, by a little enlargement 

 here and there, with here and there 

 a new paragraph. Broun alone I 

 shall treat with the respect of 



giving 



his objections with his 

 name. I think I shall improve my 

 book a good deal, and add only 

 some twenty pages." From a 

 letter to Lyell, December 4th, i860, 

 t On the third edition of the 

 ' Origin of Species,' published in 

 April 1 86 1. 



