238 ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [ch. xiii. 



ings in my study which take place at that season, and has 

 not yet been discovered. I should be very sorry to lose it, 

 for there were in it some botanical mems. which I had not 

 secured. . . 



The principal part of your letter was high laudation of 

 Darwin's book. 



Well, the book has reached me, and I finished its care- 

 ful perusal four days ago ; and I freely say that your lauda- 

 tion is not out of place. 



It is done in a masterly manner. It might well have 

 taken twenty years to produce it. It is crammed full of 

 most interesting matter thoroughly digested well ex- 

 pressed close, cogent, and taken as a system it makes out a 

 better case than I had supposed possible. . . . 



Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of it. 

 He says it is poor very poor ! I (entre nous). The fact [is] 

 he is very much annoyed by it, . . . and I do not wonder at 

 it. To bring all ideal systems within the domain of science, 

 and give good physical or natural explanations of all his 

 capital points, is as bad as to have Forbes take the glacier 

 materials . . . and give scientific explanation of all the 

 phenomena. 



Tell Darwin all this. I will write to him when I get a 

 chance. As I have promised, he and you shall have fair- 

 play here. ... I must myself write a review * of Darwin's 

 book for Sillimarfs Journal (the more so that I suspect 

 Agassiz means to come out upon it) for the next (March) 

 number, and I am now setting about it (when I ought to be 

 every moment working the Exploring] Expedition Com- 

 posite, which I know far more about). And really it is no 

 easy job as you may well imagine. 



I doubt if I shall please you altogether. I know I shall 

 not please Agassiz at all. I hear another reprint is in the 

 Press, and the book will excite much attention here, and 

 some controversy. . . . 



* On Jan. 23 Gray wrote to Darwin : " It naturally happens that my review 

 of your book does not exhibit anything like the full force of the impression 

 the book has made upon me. Under the circumstances I suppose I do your 

 theory more good here, by bespeaking for it a fair and favourable considera- 

 tion, and by standing non-committed as to its full conclusions, than I should 

 if I announced myself a convert ; nor could I say the latter, with truth. . . . 



" What seems to me the weakest point in the book is the attempt to ac- 

 count for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, &c, by natural selec- 

 tion. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian." 



