CHAPTER VI. 



Work on 'Man.' 



I 864-1 870. 



[In the autobiographical chapter (vol. i, p. 76), my father 

 gives the circumstances which led to his writing the ' Descent 

 of Man.' He states that his collection of facts, begun in 1837 

 or 1838, was continued for many years without any definite 

 idea of publishing on the subject. The following letter to 

 Mr. Wallace shows that in the period of ill-health and de- 

 pression about 1864 he despaired of ever being able to do so :] 



C. Darwin to A. R. Wallace. 



Down, [May?] 28 [1864]. 

 Dear Wallace, — I am so much better that I have just 

 finished a paper for Linnean Society ; * but I am not yet at 

 all strong, I felt much disinclination to write, and therefore 

 you must forgive me for not having sooner thanked you for 

 your paper on 'Man,'f received on the nth. But first let 

 me say that I have hardly ever in my life been more struck 

 by any paper than that on ' Variation,' &c. &c., in the Reader \ 

 I feel sure that such papers will do more for the spreading of 

 our views on the modification of species than any separate '' 

 Treatises on the simple subject itself. It is really admirable; 

 but you ought not in the Man paper to speak of the theory 



* On the three forms, &c., of Lythrum. 

 f ' Anthropological Review,' March 1864, 



% Reader, Ap. 16, 1864. " On the Phenomena of Variation," &c. Ab- 

 stract of a paper read before the Linnean Society, March 17, 1&64. . . 



