302 MISCELLANEA. [ch. xr. 



cared for the subject." And to Mr. Dyer (in November) : 

 " My book has been received with almost laughable enthu- 

 siasm, and 3500 copies have been sold ! ! ! " Again to his 

 friend Mr. Anthony Rich, he wrote on February 4, 1882, 

 " I have been plagued with an endless stream of letters on 

 the subject ; most of them very foolish and enthusiastic ; 

 but some containing good facts which I have used in cor- 

 recting yesterday the Sixth Thousand." The popularity of 

 the book may be roughly estimated by the fact that, in the 

 three years following its publication, 8500 copies were sold 

 a sale relatively greater than that of the Origin of Species. 



It is not difficult to account for its success with the non- 

 scientific public. Conclusions so wide and so novel, and so 

 easily understood, drawn from the study of creatures so 

 familiar, and treated with unabated vigour and freshness, 

 may well have attracted many readers. A reviewer remarks : 

 " In the eyes of most men . . . the earthworm is a mere 

 blind, dumb, senseless, and unpleasantly slimy annelid. Mr. 

 Darwin undertakes to rehabilitate his character, and the 

 earthworm steps forth at once as an intelligent and benefi- 

 cent personage, a worker of vast geological changes, a planer 

 down of mountain sides ... a friend of man . . . and an 

 ally of the Society for the preservation of ancient monu- 

 ments." The St. James's Gazette, of October 17th, 1881, 

 pointed out that the teaching of the cumulative importance 

 of the infinitely little is the point of contact between this 

 book and the author's previous work. 



One more book remains to be noticed, the Life of Eras- 

 mus Darwin. 



In February 1879 an essay by Dr. Ernst Krause, on the 

 scientific work of Erasmus Darwin, appeared in the evolu- 

 tionary journal, Kosmos. The number of Kosmos in ques- 

 tion was a " Gratulationsheft," * or special congratulatory 

 issue in honour of my father's birthday, so that Dr. Krause's 

 essay, glorifying the older evolutionist, was quite in its 

 place. He wrote to Dr. Krause, thanking him cordially for 

 the honour paid to Erasmus, and asking his permission to 

 publish an English translation of the Essay. 



His chief reason for writing a notice of his grandfather's 

 life was " to contradict flatly some calumnies by Miss Sew- 



* The same number contains a good biographical sketch of my father of 

 which the material was to a large extent supplied by him to the writer, Pro- 

 fessor Preyer of Jena. The article contains an excellent list of my father's 

 publications. 



