22 PUBLICATION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1859. 



modify, possibly in some degree also to extend, your present 

 applications of the principle of natural selection. Without 

 going to matters of more detail, it strikes me that there is 

 one considerable primary inconsistency, by one failure in the 

 analogy between varieties and species ; another by a sort of 

 barrier assumed for nature en insufficient grounds and arising 

 from "divergence." These may, however, be faults in my 

 own mind, attributable to yet incomplete perception of your 

 views. And I had better not trouble you about them before 

 again reading the volume. 

 . 3rd. Now these novel views are brought fairly before the 

 I scientific public, it seems truly remarkable how so many of 

 i them could have failed to see their right road sooner. How 

 could Sir C. Lyell, for instance, for thirty years read, write, 

 and think, on the subject of species and their succession^ and 

 yet constantly look down the wrong road ! 



A quarter of a century ago, you and I must have been in 

 something like the same state of mind on the main question, 

 But you were able to see and work out the quo modo of the 

 succession, the all-important thing, while I failed to grasp it. 

 I send by this post a little controversial pamphlet of old 

 date — Combe and Scott. If you will take the trouble to 

 glance at the passages scored on the margin, you will see 

 that, a quarter of a century ago, I was also one of the few 

 who then doubted the absolute distinctness of species, and 

 special creations of them. Yet I, like the rest, failed to detect 

 the quo modo which was reserved for your penetration to dis- 

 cover, and your discernment to apply. 



You answered my query about the hiatus between Satyrus 

 and Homo as was expected. The obvious explanation really 

 never occurred to me till some months after I had read the 

 papers in the ' Linnean Proceedings.' The first species of 

 Fere-hofno * would soon make direct and exterminating v/ar 

 upon his Infra-hoino cousins. The gap would thus be made, 

 and then go on increasing, into the present enormous and 



* " Almost-man." 



