18591863] LYELL AND FALCONER 241 



retired and semi-rural situation. What a grand ending you Letter 167 

 give to your book, contrasting civilisation and wild life ! 

 I quite regret that I have finished it : every evening it was 

 a real treat to me to have my half-hour in the grand 

 Amazonian forest, and picture to myself your vivid de- 

 scriptions. There are heaps of facts of value to me in a 

 natural history point of view. It was a great misfortune 

 that you were prevented giving the discussion on species. 

 But you will, I hope, be able to give your views and 

 facts somewhere else. 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 168 



Down, May I5th [1863]. 



Your letter received this morning interested me more 

 than even most of your letters, and that is saying a good 

 deal. I must scribble a little on several points. About 

 Lyell and species you put the whole case, I do believe, 

 when you say that he is " half-hearted and whole-headed." 1 

 I wrote to A. Gray that, when I saw such men as Lyell 

 and he refuse to judge, it put me in despair, and that I 

 sometimes thought I should prefer that Lyell had judged 

 against modification of species rather than profess inability 

 to decide ; and I left him to apply this to himself. I am 

 heartily rejoiced to hear that you intend to try to bring 

 L. and F. 2 together again ; but had you not better wait 

 till they are a little cooled ? You will do Science a real 

 good service. Falconer never forgave Lyell for taking the 

 Purbeck bones from him and handing them over to Owen. 



With respect to island floras, if I understand rightly, 

 we differ almost solely how plants first got there. I 

 suppose that at long intervals, from as far back as later 

 Tertiary periods to the present time, plants occasionally 

 arrived (in some cases, perhaps, aided by different currents 

 from existing currents and by former islands), and that 

 these old arrivals have survived little modified on the 

 islands, but have become greatly modified or become extinct 



1 Darwin's disappointment with the cautious point of view taken up 

 by Lyell in the Antiquity of Man is illustrated in the Life and Letters, 

 III., pp. u, 13. See also Letter 164, p. 239. 



2 Falconer claimed that Lyell had not " done justice to the part he took 

 in resuscitating the cave question," See Life and Letters, III., p. 14. 



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