398 EVOLUTION [CHAP. V 



Letter 311 To W. Horsfall. 



Down, Feb. 8th, 1882. 



In the succession of the older Formations the species 

 and genera of trilobites do change, and then they all die 

 out. To any one who believes that geologists know the 

 dawn of life (i.e., formations contemporaneous with the 

 first appearance of living creatures on the earth) no doubt 

 the sudden appearance of perfect trilobites and other 

 organisms in the oldest known life-bearing strata would 

 be fatal to evolution. But I for one, and many others, 

 utterly reject any such belief. Already three or four 

 piles of unconformable strata are known beneath the 

 Cambrian ; and these are generally in a crystalline condition, 

 and may once have been charged with organic remains. 



With regard to animals and plants, the locomotive 

 spores of some algae, furnished with cilia, would have 

 been ranked with animals if it had not been known that 

 they developed into algae. 



Letter 312 To John Collier. 1 



Down, Feb. i6th, 1882. 



I must thank you for the gift of your Art Primer, 

 which I have read with much pleasure. Parts were too 

 technical for me who could never draw a line, but I was 

 greatly interested by the whole of the first part. I wish 

 that you could explain why certain curved lines and 

 symmetrical figures give pleasure. But will not your 

 brother artists scorn you for showing yourself so good an 

 evolutionist? Perhaps they will say that allowance must 

 be made for him, as he has allied himself to so dreadful 

 a man as Huxley. This reminds me that I have just 

 been reading the last volume of essays. By good luck 

 I had not read that on Priestley, 2 and it strikes me as 

 the most splendid essay which I ever read. That on 

 automatism 3 is wonderfully interesting : more is the pity, 



1 The Honourable John Collier, Royal Academician, son-in-law to 

 Professor Huxley. 



2 Science and Culture, and other Essays: London, iSSi. The fifth 

 Essay is on Joseph Priestley (p. 94). 



3 Essay IX. (p. 199) is entitled " On the Hypothesis that Animals 

 are Automata, and its history." 



