1863] REVIE\V|S 



Dublin Nat. Hist. Review is the most unfair thing which has Letter 104 

 appeared, one mass of misrepresentation. It is evidently 

 by Haughton, 1 the geologist, chemist and mathematician. It 

 shows immeasurable conceit and contempt of all who are not 

 mathematicians. He discusses bees' cells, and puts a series 

 which I have never alluded to, and wholly ignores the inter- 

 mediate comb of Melipona, which alone led me to my notions. 

 The article is a curiosity of unfairness and arrogance ; but, 

 as he sneers at Malthus, I am content, for it is clear he cannot 

 reason. He is a friend of Harvey, with whom I have had 

 some correspondence. Your article has clearly, as he admits, 

 influenced him. He admits to a certain extent Natural Selec- 

 tion, yet I am sure does not understand me. It is strange 

 that very few do, and I am become quite convinced that 

 I must be an extremely bad explainer. To recur for a 

 moment to Owen : he grossly misrepresents and is very 

 unfair to Huxley. You say that you think the article must 

 be by a pupil of Owen ; but no one fact tells so strongly 

 against Owen, considering his former position at the College 

 of Surgeons, as that he has never reared one pupil or follower. 

 In the number just out of FraseSs Magazine' 2 ' there is an 

 article or review on Lamarck and me by W. Hopkins, the 

 mathematician, who, like Haughton, despises the reasoning 

 power of all naturalists. Personally he is extremely kind 

 towards me ; but he evidently in the following number means 

 to blow me into atoms. He does not in the least appreciate 

 the difference in my views and Lamarck's, as explaining 

 adaptation, the principle of divergence, the increase of 

 dominant groups, and the almost necessary extinction of the 

 less dominant and smaller groups, etc. 



1 Samuel Haughton (1821-97), author of Animal Mechanics, a Manual 

 of Geology, and numerous papers on Physics, Mathematics, Geology, etc. 

 In November 1862 Darwin wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker: "Do you know 

 whether there are two Rev. Prof. Haughtons at Dublin ? One of 

 this name has made a splendid medical discovery of nicotine counter- 

 acting strychnine and tetanus ? Can it be my dear friend ? If so, he is 

 at full liberty for the future to sneer [at] and abuse me to his heart's 

 content." Unfortunately, Prof. Haughton's discovery has not proved 

 of more permanent value than his criticism on the Origi?i of Species. 



2 See Life and Letters, II., p. 314. 



