en. xi.] 18581859. 199 



The table of contents will show what it is. 

 I would make a similar, but shorter and more accurate 

 sketch for the Linnean Journal. 



I will do anything. God bless you, my dear kind friend. 

 I can write no more. I send this by my servant to Kew. 



The joint paper* of Mr. Wallace and my father was 

 read at the Linnean Society on the evening of July 1st. 

 Mr. Wallace's Essay bore the title, " On the Tendency of 

 Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type." 



My father's contribution to the paper consisted of (1) 

 Extracts from the sketch of 18-44 ; (2) part of a letter ad- 

 dressed to Dr. Asa Gray, dated September 5, 1857. The 

 paper was " communicated " to the Society by Sir Charles 

 Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker, in whose prefatory letter a 

 clear account of the circumstances of the case is given. 



Referring to Mr. Wallace's Essay, they wrote : 



" So highly did Mr. Darwin appreciate the value of the 

 views therein set forth, that he proposed, in a letter to Sir 

 Charles Lyell, to obtain Mr. Wallace's consent to allow the 

 Essay to be published as soon as possible. Of this step we 

 highly approved, provided Mr. Darwin did not withhold from 

 the public, as he was strongly inclined to do (in favour of 

 Mr. Wallace), the memoir which he had himself written on 

 the same subject, and which, as before stated, one of us had 

 perused in 1844, and the contents of which we had both of 

 us been privy to for many years. On representing this to 

 Mr. Darwin, he gave us permission to make what use we 

 thought proper of his memoir, &c. ; and in adopting our 

 present course, of presenting it to the Linnean Society, we 

 have explained to him that we are not solely considering the 

 relative claims to priority of himself and his friend, but the 

 interests of science generally." 



Sir Charles Lyell and Sir J. D. Hooker were present at 

 the reading of the paper, and both, I believe, made a few 

 remarks, chiefly with a view of impressing on those present 

 the necessity of giving the most careful consideration to 

 what they had heard. There was, however, no semblance 

 of a discussion. Sir Joseph Hooker writes to me : " The 

 interest excited was intense, but the subject was too novel 



* " On the tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetuation 

 of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection." Linnean Society's 

 Journal, iii. p. 53. 



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