282 THE SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [ch. xiv. 



cc I heard yesterday from Wallace, who says (excuse hor- 

 rid vanity), ' I can hardly tell you how much I admire the 

 chapter on Pangenesis. It is a positive comfort to me to 

 have any feasible explanation of a difficulty that has always 

 been haunting me, and I shall never be able to give it up 

 till a better one supplies its place, and that I think hardly 

 possible.' Now his foregoing [italicised] words express my 

 sentiments exactly and fully : though perhaps I feel the re- 

 lief extra strongly from having during many years vainly 

 attempted to form some hypothesis. When you or Huxley 

 say that a single cell of a plant, or the stump of an ampu- 

 tated limb, has the ' potentiality ' of reproducing the whole 

 or ' diffuses an influence,' these words give me no positive 

 idea ; but when it is said that the cells of a plant, or stump, 

 include atoms derived from every other cell of the whole 

 organism and capable of development, I gain a distinct idea." 



Immediately after the publication of the book, he 

 wrote : 



Down, February 10 [1868]. 



My dear Hooker, What is the good of having a 

 friend, if one may not boast of him ? I heard yesterday 

 that Murray has sold in a week the whole edition of 1500 

 copies of my book, and the sale so pressing that he has 

 agreed with Clowes to get another edition in fourteen days ! 

 This has done me a world of good, for I had got into a sort 

 of dogged hatred of my book. And now there has appeared 

 a review in the Pall Mall which has pleased me excessively, 

 more perhaps than is reasonable. I am quite content, and 

 do not care how much I may be pitched into. If by any 

 chance you should hear who wrote the article in the Pall 

 Jfally do please tell me ; it is some one who writes capitally, 

 and who knows the subject. I went to luncheon on Sun- 

 day, to Lubbock's, partly in hopes of seeing you, and, be 

 hanged to you, you were not there. 



Your cock-a-hoop friend, 



CD. 



Independently of the favourable tone of the able series 

 of notices in the Pall Mall Gazette (Feb. 10, 15, 17, 1868), 

 my father may well have been gratified by the following 

 passages : 



" We must call attention to the rare and noble calmness 

 with which he expounds his own views, undisturbed by the 



