18441858] THE VESTIGES 75 



for my volume. I do not mean in the light of puffing my Letter 34 

 book, but I want not to send copies to those who from other 

 studies, age, etc., would view it as waste paper. From 

 assistance rendered me, I consider myself bound to send 

 copies to: (i) Bosquet of Maestricht, (2) Milne Edwards, 

 (3) Dana, (4) Agassiz, (5) Muller, (6) W. Dunker of Hesse 

 Cassel. Now I have five or six other copies to distribute, 

 and will you be so very kind as to help me ? I had thought 

 of Von Siebold, Loven, d'Orbigny, Kolliker, Sars, Kroyer, etc., 

 but I know hardly anything about any of them. 



My second question, it is merely a chance whether you 

 can answer, it is whether I can send these books or any of 

 them (in some cases accompanied by specimens), through 

 the Royal Society : I have some vague idea of having heard 

 that the Royal Society did sometimes thus assist members. 



I have just been reading your review of the Vestiges^ 

 and the way you handle a great Professor is really exquisite 

 and inimitable. I have been extremely interested in other 

 parts, and to my mind it is incomparably the best review I 

 have read on the Vestiges ; but I cannot think but that you 

 are rather hard on the poor author. I must think that such 

 a book, if it does no other good, spreads the taste for Natural 

 Science. 



But I am perhaps no fair judge, for I am almost as un- 

 orthodox about species as the Vestiges itself, though I hope 

 not quite so unphilosophical. How capitally you analyse 

 his notion about law. I do not know when I have read a 

 review which interested me so much. By Heavens, how 

 the blood must have gushed into the capillaries when a 

 certain great man (whom with all his faults I cannot help 

 liking) read it ! 



I am rather sorry you do not think more of Agassiz's 

 embryological stages, 2 for though I saw how excessively 

 weak the evidence was, I was led to hope in its truth. 



1 In his chapter on the "Reception of the Origin of Species" (Life 

 and Letters, II., pp. 188-9), M r - Huxley wrote: "and the only review 

 I ever have qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless 

 savagery, is one I wrote on the ' Vestiges.' ' The article is in the British 

 and Foreign Medico-chirurgical Review, XIII., 1854, p. 425. The " great 

 man" referred to below is Owen: see Huxley's review, p. 439, and 

 Huxley's Life. I., p. 94. 



2 See Origin, Ed. vi., p. 310 : also Letter 40, Note i, p. 82 



