138 THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [i860. 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



15 Marine Parade, Eastbourne, 



Friday evening [September 28tli, i860]. 



.... I am very glad to hear about the Germans reading 

 my book. No one will be converted who has not independ- 

 ently begun to doubt about species. Is not Krohn * a good 

 fellow ? I have long meant to write to him. He has been 

 working at Cirripedes, and has detected two or three 

 gigantic blunders, .* . . . about which, I thank Heaven, I 

 spoke rather doubtfully. Such difficult dissection that even 

 Huxley failed. It is chiefly the interpretation which I put on 

 parts that is so wrong, and not the parts which I describe. 

 But they were gigantic blunders, and why I say all this is be- 

 cause Krohn, instead of crowing at all, pointed out my errors 

 with the utmost gentleness and pleasantness. I have always 

 meant to write to him and thank him. I suppose Dr. Krohn, 

 Bonn, would reach him. 



I cannot see yet how the multiple origin of dog can be 

 properly brought as argument for the multiple origin of man. 

 Is not your feeling a remnant of the deeply impressed one on 

 all our minds, that a species is an entity, something quite dis- 

 tinct from a variety ? Is it not that the dog case injures the 

 argument from fertility, so that one main argument that the 

 races of man are varieties and not species — />., because they 

 are fertile inter se, is much weakened ? 



I quite agree with what Hooker says, that whatever varia- 

 tion is possible under culture, is possible under nature ; not that 

 the same form would ever be accumulated and arrived at by 

 selection for man's pleasure, and by natural selection for the 

 organism's own good. 



Talking of " natural selection ; " if I had to commence de 



* There are two papers by Aug. Krohn, one on the Cement Glands, 

 and the other on the development of Cirripedes, ' Wiegmann's Archiv,' 

 XXV. and xxvi. My father has remarked that he "blundered dreadfully 

 about the cement glands," ' Autobiography,' p. 66- 



