146 EVOLUTION [CHAP. Ill 



in an undated letter from Sedgwick to Owen : " Do you know who was 

 the author of the article in the Edinburgh on the subject of Darwin's 

 theory ? On the whole, I think it very good. I once suspected that you 

 must have had a hand in it, and I then abandoned that thought. I have 

 not read it with any care " (Owen's Life, Vol. II., p. 96). 

 Letter 98 April gth [1860]. 



I never saw such an amount of misrepresentation. At 

 p. 53O 1 he says we are called on to accept the hypothesis on 

 the plea of ignorance, whereas I think I could not have made 

 it clearer that I admit the imperfection of the Geological 

 Record as a great difficulty. 



The quotation 2 on p. 512 of the Review about " young 

 and rising naturalists with plastic minds," attributed to 

 " nature of limbs," is a false quotation, as I do not use the 

 words " plastic minds." 



At p. 501 3 the quotation is garbled, for I only ask 

 whether naturalists believe about elemental atoms flashing, 

 etc., and he changes it into that I state that they do believe. 



At p. 500 4 it is very false to say that I imply by 



1 " Lasting and fruitful conclusions have, indeed, hitherto been based 

 only on the possession of knowledge ; now we are called upon to accept 

 an hypothesis on the plea of want of knowledge. The geological record, 

 it is averred, is so imperfect ! " Edinburgh Review, CXI., 1860, p. 530. 



3 " We are appealed to, or at least 'the young and rising naturalists 

 with plastic minds,* [On the Nature of the Limbs, p. 482] are adjured." 

 It will be seen that the inverted comma after " naturalists " is omitted ; 

 the asterisk referring, in a footnote (here placed in square brackets), 

 to p. 482 of the Origin, seems to have been incorrectly assumed by 

 Mr. Darwin to show the close of the quotation. Ibid., p. 512. 



3 The passage (Origin, Ed. I., p. 483) begins, " But do they really 

 believe . . . ," and shows clearly that the author considers such a belief 

 all but impossible. 



4 " All who have brought the transmutation speculation to the test of 

 observed facts and ascertained powers in organic life, and have published 

 the results, usually adverse to such speculations, are set down by 

 Mr. Darwin as 'curiously illustrating the blindness of preconceived 

 opinion.' " The passage in the Origin, p. 482, begins by expressing 

 surprise at the point of view of some naturalists : " They admit that a 

 multitude of forms, which till lately they themselves thought were special 

 creations, . . . have been produced by variation, but they refuse to 

 extend the same view to other and very slightly different forms. . . . 

 They admit variation as a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject 

 it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two cases. The 

 day will come when this will be given as a curious illustration of the 

 blindness of preconceived opinion." 



