122 THE COMING [CH. 



has been given to the world, and it proves how 

 completely Darwin had, at that early date, thought 

 out the main lines of his future opus magnum. 



Darwin, however, had no idea of publishing his 

 theory to the world until he was able to support it 

 by a great mass of facts and observations. Lyell, 

 again and again, warned him of the danger which 

 he incurred of being forestalled by other workers ; 

 while his brother Erasmus constantly said to him, 

 'You will find that some one will have been before 

 you 126 !' 



The utmost that Darwin could be persuaded to 

 do, however, was to enlarge his sketch of 1842 into 

 one of 230 pages. This he did in the summer of 

 1844. His manner of procedure seems to have been 

 that, keeping to the same general arrangement of 

 the matter as he had adopted in his original sketch, 

 he elaborated the arguments and added illustrations. 

 Each of the 35 pages of the pencilled sketch, as it 

 was dealt with, had a vertical line drawn across it 

 and was thrown aside. While the ' pencilled sketch ' 

 of 1842 was little better than a collection of memo- 

 randa, which, though intelligible to the writer at the 

 time, are sometimes difficult either to decipher or 

 to understand the meaning of, the expanded work 

 of 1844 was a much more connected and readable 

 document, which Darwin caused to be carefully 

 copied out. The work was done in the summer 



