1859-1863] EDINBURGH REVIEW 149 



To J. S. Henslow. Letter 100 



Down, May 8th [i86oj. 



Very many thanks about the Elodea, which case interests 

 me much. I wrote to Mr. Marshall x at Ely, and in due time 

 he says he will send me whatever information he can 

 procure. 



Owen 2 is indeed very spiteful. Fie misrepresents and 

 alters what I say very unfairly. But I think his conduct 

 towards Hooker most ungenerous : viz., to allude to his essay 

 (Australian Flora), and not to notice the magnificent results 

 on geographical distribution. The Londoners say he is mad 

 with envy because my book has been talked about ; what 

 a strange man to be envious of a naturalist like myself, 

 immeasurably his inferior ! From one conversation with 

 him I really suspect he goes at the bottom of his hidden 

 soul as far as I do. 



I wonder whether Sedgwick noticed in the Edinburgh 

 Review about the " Sacerdotal revilers," so the revilers are 

 tearing each other to pieces. I suppose Sedgwick will be very 

 fierce against me at the Philosophical Society. 3 Judging from 

 his notice in the Spectator^ he will misrepresent me, but it will 

 certainly be unintentionally done. In a letter to me, and in 

 the above notice, he talks much about my departing from 

 the spirit of inductive philosophy. I wish, if you ever talk 



1 W. Marshall was the author of Anacharis alsinastruni, a new 

 water-weed: four letters to the Cambridge Independent Press, reprinted 

 as a pamphlet, 1852. 



2 Owen was believed to be the author of the article in the Edinburgh 

 Review, April, 1860. See Letter 98. 



3 The meeting of the Cambridge Phil. Soc. was held on May 7th, 

 1860, and fully reported in the Cambridge Chronicle, May I9th. Sedgwick 

 is reported to have said that " Darwin's theory is not inductive is not 

 based on a series of acknowledged facts, leading to a general conclusion 

 evolved, logically, out of the facts. . . . The only facts he pretends to 

 adduce, as true elements of proof, are the varieties produced by domesti- 

 cation and the artifices of crossbreeding." Sedgwick went on to speak 

 of the vexatious multiplication of supposed species, and adds, " In this 

 respect Darwin's theory may help to simplify our classifications, and 

 thereby do good service to modern science. But he has not undermined 

 any grand truth in the constancy of natural laws, and the continuity of 

 true species." 



4 March 24th, 1860 ; see Life and Letters, II., p. 297. 



