i860.] progress of opinion. 291 



Wollaston misrepresents accidentally, to a wonderful extent, 

 some passages in my book. He reviewed, without relooking 

 at certain passages. 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



Down, February 25th [i860]. 



I cannot help wondering at your zeal about my 



book. I declare to heaven you seem to care as much about 

 my book as I do myself. You have no right to be so 

 eminently unselfish ! I have taken off my spit [i.e. file] a 

 letter of Ramsay's, as every geologist convert I think very 

 important. By the way, I saw some time ago a letter from 

 H. D. Rogers* to Huxley, in which he goes very far with 

 us 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down, Saturday March 3rd, [i860]. 



My DEAR HOOKER, What a day's work you had on that 

 Thursday ! I was not able to go to London till Monday, and 

 then I was a fool for going, for, on Tuesday night, I had an 

 attack of fever (with a touch of pleurisy), which came on 

 like a lion, but went off as a lamb, but has shattered me a 

 good bit. 



I was much interested by your last note. ... I think you 

 expect too much in regard to change of opinion on the sub- 

 ject of Species. One large class of men, more especially I 

 suspect of naturalists, never will care about any general ques- 

 tion, of which old Gray, of the British Museum, may be taken 

 as a type ; and secondly, nearly all men past a moderate age, 

 either in actual years or in mind, are, I am fully convinced, 

 incapable of looking at facts under a new point of view. 

 Seriously, I am astonished and rejoiced at the progress which 



* Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. Born in the 

 United States 1809, died 1866. 



U 2 



