248 PUBLICATION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1859. 



of last week ; but it may have come a few days sooner, and 

 been overlooked among my book-parcels, which often remain 

 unopened when I am lazy or busy with any work before me. 

 So soon as I opened it I began to read it, and I finished it, 

 after many interruptions, on Tuesday. Yesterday I was em- 

 ployed 1st, in preparing for my lecture ; 2ndly, in attending 

 a meeting of my brother Fellows to discuss the final proposi- 

 tions of the Parliamentary Commissioners ; 3rdly, in lecturing ; 

 4thly, in hearing the conclusion of the discussion and the 

 College reply, whereby, in conformity with my own wishes, we 

 accepted the scheme of the Commissioners ; 5thly, in dining 

 with an old friend at Clare College ; 6thly, in adjourning to 

 the weekly meeting of the Ray Club, from which I returned 

 at 10 P.M., dog-tired, and hardly able to climb my staircase. 

 Lastly, in looking through the Times to see what was going 

 on in the busy world. 



I do not state this to fill space (though I believe that 

 Nature does abhor a vacuum), but to prove that my reply and 

 my thanks are sent to you by the earliest leisure I have, though 

 that is but a very contracted opportunity. If I did not think 

 you a good-tempered and truth-loving man, I should not tell 

 you that (spite of the great knowledge, store of facts, capital 

 views of the correlation of the various parts of organic nature, 

 admirable hints about the diffusion, through wide regions, of 

 many related organic beings, &c. &c.) I have read your book 

 with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly, 

 parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore ; other parts 

 I read with absolute sorrow, because I think them utterly 

 false and grievously mischievous. You have deserted after 

 a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth the true 

 method of induction, and started us in machinery as wild, 

 I think, as Bishop Wilkins's locomotive that was to sail with 

 us to the moon. Many of your wide conclusions are based 

 upon assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved, 

 why then express them in the language and arrangement 



