18591863] LYELL 243 



which he supposes that we should account for the structure Letter 170 

 of its limbs ; and asks how we know that certain insects had 

 increased in the Madagascar forests. Would it not be a good 

 rebuff to ask him how he knows there were trees at all on the 

 leafless plains of La Plata for his Mylodons to tear down ? 

 But I must stop, for if I once begin about [him] there will be 

 no end. I was disappointed in the part about species in 

 Lyell. 1 You and Hooker are the only two bold men. I 

 have had a bad spring and summer, almost constantly very 

 unwell ; but I am crawling on in my book on Variation under 

 Domestication. 



To C. Lyell. Letter 171 



Down, Aug. I4th [1863]. 



Have you seen Bentham's remarks on species in his 

 address to the Linnean Society ? 2 they have pleased me more 

 than anything I have read for some time. I have no news, 

 for I have not seen a soul for months, and have had a bad 

 spring and summer, but have managed to do a good deal of 

 work. Emma is threatening me to take me to Malvern, and 

 perhaps I shall be compelled, but it is a horrid waste of time ; 

 you must have enjoyed North Wales, I should think, it is to 

 me a most glorious country. . . . 



If you have not read Bates' book, 3 I think it would 

 interest you. He is second only to Humboldt in describing 

 a tropical forest. 4 Talking of reading, I have never got the 

 EdinburgJif in which, I suppose, you are cut up. 



1 LyelPs Antiquity of Man. See Life and Letters, III., p. 11. 



2 Presidential address before the Linnsean Society by G. Bentham 

 (Journ. Proc. Linn. Soc., Vol. VII., p. xi., 1864). 



3 Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, 2 vols., 

 London, 1863. In a letter to Bates, April i8th, 1863, Darwin writes, " It 

 is the best work of natural history travels ever published in England " 

 (Life and Letters, II., p. 381). 



4 Quoted in the Life and Letters, II., p. 381. 



5 The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man, by Sir Charles 

 Lyell, and works by other authors reviewed in the Edinburgh Review. 

 Vol. CXVIII., July 1863. The writer sums up his criticism as follows : 

 "Glancing at the work of Sir Charles Lyell as a whole, it leaves the 

 impression on our minds that we have been reading an ingenious 

 academical thesis, rather than a work of demonstration by an original 

 writer. . . . There is no argument in it, and only a few facts which 

 have not been stated elsewhere by Sir C. Lyell himself or by others" 

 (loc. cit., p. 294). 



