244 ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [ch. xiii. 



C. D. to Asa Gray. Down, April 3 [I860]. 



... I remember well the time when the thought of the 

 eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of 

 the complaint, and now small trifling particulars of struct- 

 ure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a 

 feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me 

 sick ! . . . 



You may like to hear about reviews on my book. Sedg- 

 wick (as I and Lyell feel certain from internal evidence) 

 has reviewed me savagely and unfairly in the Spectator* 

 The notice includes much abuse, and is hardly fair in sev- 

 eral respects. He would actually lead any one, who was 

 ignorant of geology, to suppose that I had invented the 

 great gaps between successive geological formations, instead 

 of its being an almost universally admitted dogma. But 

 my dear old friend Sedgwick, with his noble heart, is old, 

 and is rabid with indignation. . . . There has been one 

 prodigy of a review, namely, an opposed one (by Pictet,f the 

 palaeontologist, in the Bib. Universelle of Geneva) which is 

 perfectly fair and just, and I agree to every word he says ; 

 our only difference being that he attaches less weight to 

 arguments in favour, and more to arguments opposed, than 

 I do. Of all the opposed reviews, I think this the only quite 

 fair one, and I never expected to see one. Please observe 

 that I do not class your review by any means as opposed, 

 though you think so yourself ! It has done me much too 

 good service ever to appear in that rank in my eyes. But 

 I fear I shall weary you with so much about my book. I 

 should rather think there was a good chance of my becom- 

 ing the most egotistical man in all Europe ! What a proud 



died in Ceylon, September 11, 1882. He began life as a Kotary, but bis pas- 

 sion tor Botany and Entomology ultimately led to bis taking to Science as a 

 profession. He became lecturer on Botany at tbe Bristol School of Medicine, 

 and in 1849 he was appointed Director of the Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, 

 which he made " the most beautiful tropical garden in the world." He is 

 best known through his important discovery of conjugation in the Diato- 

 maceae (1847). His Emimeratio Plantar-urn Zeylanice (1858-64] was " the first 

 complete account, on modern lines, of any definitely circumscribed tropical 

 area." (From a notice in Nature, October 26, 1882.) 



* Spectator, March 24, 1860. There were favourable notices of the Origin 

 by Huxley in the Westminster Review, and Carpenter in the Medico- Chir. 

 Review, both in the April numbers. 



t Francois Jules Pictet,. in the Archives des Sciences de la Bibliothcaw 

 Universelle, Mars 1860. 



