170 EVOLUTION [CHAP. Ill 



Letter 113 time or so, as they have lately discussed Design. I have sent 

 the second, or August, Atlantic article to the Annals and 

 Mag. of Nat. History ^ The copy which you have I want 

 to send to Pictet, as I told A. Gray I would, thinking from 

 what he said he would like this to be done. I doubt whether 

 it would be possible to get the October number reprinted in 

 this country ; so that I am in no hurry at all for this. 



I had a letter a few weeks ago from Symonds 2 on the 

 imperfection of the Geological Record, less clear and forcible 

 than I expected. I answered him at length and very civilly, 

 though I could hardly make out what he was driving at. He 

 spoke about you in a way which it did me good to read. 



I am extremely glad that you like A. Gray's reviews. 

 How generous and unselfish he has been in all his labour ! 

 Are you not struck by his metaphors and similes ? I have 

 told him he is a poet and not a lawyer. 



I should altogether doubt on turtles being converted into 

 land tortoises on any one island. Remember how closely 

 similar tortoises are on all continents, as well as islands ; they 

 must have all descended from one ancient progenitor, in- 

 cluding the gigantic tortoise of the Himalaya. 



I think you must be cautious in not running the con- 

 venient doctrine that only one species out of very many ever 

 varies. Reflect on such cases as the fauna and flora of 

 Europe, North America, and Japan, which are so similar, 

 and yet which have a great majority of their species either 



thus sums up his views : " Wherefore we may insist that, for all that yet 

 appears, the argument for design, as presented by the natural theologians, 

 is just as good now, if we accept Darwin's theory, as it was before the 

 theory was promulgated ; and that the sceptical juryman, who was about 

 to join the other eleven in an unanimous verdict in favour of design, finds 

 no good excuse for keeping the Court longer waiting." 



1 Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist., Vol. VI., pp. 373-86, 1860. (From 

 the Atlantic Monthly, August, 1860.) 



2 William Samuel Symonds (1818-87), a member of an old West- 

 country family, was an undergraduate of Christ's College, Cambridge, 

 and in 1845 became Rector of Pendock, Worcestershire. He published 

 in 1858 a book entitled Stones of the Valley ; in 1859 Old Bones, or Notes 



for Young Naturalists ; and in 1872 his best-known work, Records of the 

 Rocks. Mr. Symonds passed the later years of his life at Sunningdale, 

 the house of his son-in-law, Sir Joseph Hooker. (See Quart. Journ, Geol, 

 Soc., Vol. XLIV., p. xliii.) 



