184 EVOLUTION [CHAP, rii 



Letter 124 condensed manner with which you have put the case. I am 

 actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to 

 adduce direct evidence of one species changing into another, 

 but that I believe that this view in the main is correct, 

 because so many phenomena can be thus grouped together 

 and explained. But it is generally of no use ; I cannot make 

 persons see this. I generally throw in their teeth the univer- 

 sally admitted theory of the undulation of light, neither the 

 undulation nor the very existence of ether being proved, yet 

 admitted because the view explains so much. You are one 

 of the very few who have seen this, and have now put it most 

 forcibly and clearly. I am much pleased to see how carefully 

 you have read my book, and, what is far more important, 

 reflected on so many points with an independent spirit. As 

 I am deeply interested in the subject (and I hope not exclu- 

 sively under a personal point of view) I could not resist 

 venturing to thank you for the right good service which you 

 have done. 



I need hardly say that this note requires no answer. 



Letter 125 To J. D. Hooker. 1 



Down, [Ap.] 23rd, [1861]. 



I have been much interested by Bentham's paper 2 in 

 the Natural History Review, but it would not, of course, 

 from familiarity, strike you as it did me. I liked the 

 whole all the facts on the nature of close and varying 

 species. Good Heavens ! to think of the British botanists 

 turning up their noses and saying that he knows nothing 

 of British plants ! I was also pleased at his remarks on 

 classification, because it showed me that I wrote truly on 

 this subject in the Or/gin. I saw Bentham at the Linnean 

 Society, and had some talk with him and Lubbock and 

 Edgeworth, Wallich, and several others. I asked Bentham 



1 Parts of this letter are published in Life and Letters, II., p. 362. 



2 This refers to Bentham's paper " On the Species and Genera of 

 Plants, etc.," Nat. Hist. Review, April, 1861, p. 133, which is founded on, 

 or extracted from, a paper read before the Linn. Soc., Nov. I5th, 1858. It 

 had been originally set down to be read on July ist, 1858, but gave way to 

 the papers of Darwin and Wallace. Mr. Bentham has described (Life and 

 Letters, II., p. 294) how he reluctantly cancelled the parts urging "original 

 fixity" of specific type, and the remainder seems not to have been pub- 

 lished except in the above-quoted paper in the Nat. Hist. Review. 



