236 GEOLOGY [CHAP. IX 



Letter 569 is one of the most striking which I have ever read on the 

 affiliation of species. 1 



Letter 570 A. Sedgwick to C. Darwin. 



In May, 1870, Darwin "went to the Bull Hotel, Cambridge, to see 

 the boys, and for a little rest and enjoyment." 2 The following letter 

 was received after his return to Down. 



Trinity College, Cambridge, May 3oth, 1870. 



My dear Darwin, 



Your very kind letter surprised me. Not that I was 

 surprised at the pleasant and very welcome feeling with 

 which it was written. But I could not make out what I 

 had done to deserve the praise of "extraordinary kindness to 

 yourself and family." I would most willingly have done my 

 best to promote the objects of your visit, but you gave me 

 no opportunity of doing so. I was truly grieved to find that 

 my joy at seeing you again was almost too robust for your 

 state of nerves, and that my society, after a little while, 

 became oppressive to you. But I do trust that your Cam- 

 bridge visit has done you no constitutional harm ; nay, rather 

 that it has done you some good. I only speak honest truth 

 when I say that I was overflowing with joy when I saw you, 

 and saw you in the midst of a dear family party, and solaced 

 at every turn by the loving care of a dear wife and daughters. 

 How different from my position that of a very old man, 

 living in cheerless solitude ! May God help and cheer you 



1 The quotation in Lyell's Principles, Ed. X., Vol. II., p. 484, is from 

 M. Gaudry's Animaux Fossiles dc Pikcrmi, 1866, p. 34 : 



" In how different a light does the question of the nature of species 

 now present itself to us from that in which it appeared only twenty years 

 ago, before we had studied the fossil remains of Greece and the allied 

 forms of other countries. How clearly do these fossil relics point to the 

 idea that species, genera, families, and orders now so distinct have had 

 common ancestors. The more we advance and fill up the gaps, the more 

 we feel persuaded that the remaining voids exist rather in our knowledge 

 than in nature. A few blows of the pickaxe at the foot of the Pyrenees, 

 of the Himalaya, of Mount Pentelicus in Greece, a few diggings in the 

 sandpits of Eppelsheim, or in the Mauvaises Terres of Nebraska, have 

 revealed to us the closest connecting links between forms which seemed 

 before so widely separated. How much closer will these links be drawn 

 when Palaeontology shall have escaped from its cradle ! " 



3 See Life and Letters^ II I., 125. 



