ch. n.J 'DESCENT OF MAX.' 49 



tion was begun, as already stated, in the beginning of 18G0, 

 but was not published until the beginning of 1868. It was 

 a big book, and cost me four years and two months' hard 

 labour. It gives all my observations and an immense num- 

 ber of facts collected from various sources, about our 

 domestic productions. In the second volume the causes 

 and laws of variation, inheritance, &c, are discussed, as far 

 as our present state of knowledge permits. Towards the 

 end of the work I give my well-abused hypothesis of Pan- 

 genesis. An unverified hypothesis is of little or no value ; 

 but if any one should hereafter be led to make observations 

 by which some such hypothesis could be established, I shall 

 have done good service, as an astonishing number of isolated 

 facts can be thus connected together and rendered intelli- 

 gible. In 1875 a second and largely corrected edition, which 

 cost me a good deal of labour, was brought out. 



My Descent of Man was published in February 1871. As 

 soon as I had become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced 

 that species were mutable productions, I could not avoid the 

 belief that man must come under the same law. Accord- 

 ingly I collected notes on the subject for my own satisfac- 

 tion, and not for a long time with any intention of publish- 

 ing. Although in the Origin of Species the derivation of 

 any particular species is never discussed, yet I thought it 

 best, in order that no honourable man should accuse me of 

 concealing my views, to add that by the work " light would 

 be thrown on the origin of man and his history." It would 

 have been useless, and injurious to the success of the book 

 to have paraded, without giving any evidence, my conviction 

 with respect to his origin. 



But when I found that many naturalists fully accepted 

 the doctrine of the evolution of species, it seemed to me 

 advisable to work up such notes as I possessed, and to publish 

 a special treatise on the origin of man. I was the more glad 

 to do so, as it gave me an opportunity of fully discussing sex- 

 ual selection a subject which had always greatly interested 

 me. This subject, and that of the variation of our domestic 

 productions, together with the causes and laws of variation, 

 inheritance, and the intercrossing of plants, are the sole 

 subjects which I have been able to write about in full, so as 

 to use all the materials which I have collected. The Descent 

 of Man took me three years to write, but then as usual some 

 of this time was lost by ill health, and some was consumed 

 by preparing new editions and other minor works. A 



