1859-1863] HARVEY'S CRITICISMS 163 



In p. 4 of your letter you say you give up many book- Letter no 

 species as separate creations : I give up all, and you infer 

 that our difference is only in degree and not in kind. I 

 dissent from this ; for I give a distinct reason ho\v far I go in 

 giving up species. I look at all forms, which resemble each 

 other homologically or embryologically, as certainly descended 

 from the same species. 



You hit me hard and fairly l about my question (p. 483, 

 Origin} about creation of eggs or young, etc. (but not about 

 mammals with the mark of the umbilical cord), yet I still 

 have an illogical sort of feeling that there is less difficulty in 

 imagining the creation of an asexual cell, increasing by simple 

 division. 



herbaceous species seems to me to be unsupported by sufficient evidence. 

 You cite no particular trees, and I may therefore be wrong in guessing 

 that the orders you allude to are Scrophularinece and Compositae ; and 

 the insular trees the Antarctic Veronicas and the arborescent Composite 

 of St. Helena, Tasmania, etc. But in South Africa Halleria (Scrophu- 

 larineae) is often as large and woody as an apple tree ; and there are 

 several South African arborescent Composite (Senecio and Oldenburgid). 

 Besides, in Tasmania at least, the arborescent Composites are not found 

 competing with herbaceous plants alone, and growing taller and taller 

 by overtopping them . . . ; for the most arborescent of them all 

 (Eurybia argophylla, the Musk tree) grows ... in Eucalyptus forests. 

 And so of the South African Halleria, which is a tree among trees. 

 What the conditions of the arborescent Gerania of the Sandwich Islands 

 may be I am unable to say. ... I cannot remember any other instances, 

 nor can I accept your explanation in any of the cases I have cited." 



1 Harvey writes : " You ask were all the infinitely numerous kinds 

 of animals and plants created as eggs or seed, or as full grown ? To 

 this it is sufficient to reply, was your primordial organism, or were your 

 four or five progenitors created as egg, seed, or full grown ? Neither 

 theory attempts to solve this riddle, nor yet the riddle of the Omphalos." 

 The latter point, which Mr. Darwin refuses to give up, is at p. 483 of the 

 Origin, " and, in the case of mammals, were they created bearing the 

 false marks of nourishment from the mother's womb ? >J In the third 

 edition of the Origin, 1861, p. 517, the author adds, after the last-cited 

 passage : " Undoubtedly these same questions cannot be answered by 

 those who, under the present state of science, believe in the creation of 

 a few aboriginal forms, or of some one form of life. In the sixth edition, 

 probably with a view to the umbilicus, he writes (p. 423) : " Undoubtedly 

 some of these same questions," etc., etc. From notes in Mr. Darwin's 

 copy of the second edition it is clear that the change in the third edition 

 was chiefly due to Harvey's letter. See Letter 115. 



