go THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [i860. 



friends. If it would not be disagreeable to you to send me 

 your opinion, I certainly should be truly obliged. . . . 



C. Darwin to Asa Gray, 



Down, April 3rd [1S60]. 



' .... I remember well the time when the thought of the 

 eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of 

 the complaint, and now small trifling particulars of structure 

 often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather 

 in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick ! . . . 

 You may like to hear about reviews on my book. Sedg- 

 wick (as I and Lyell feel certaifi from internal evidence) has 

 reviewed me savagely and unfairly in the Spectator.^ The 

 notice includes much abuse, and is hardly fair in several 

 respects. He would actually lead any one, who was ignorant 

 of geology, to suppose that I had invented the great gaps 

 between successive geological formations, instead of its being 

 an almost universally admitted dogma. But my dear old 

 friend Sedgwick, with his noble heart, is old, and is rabid with 

 indignation. It is hard to please every one ; you may re- 

 member that in my last letter I asked you to leave out 

 about the Weald denudation : I told Jukes this (who is head 

 man of the Irish geological survey), and he blamed me much, 

 for he believed every word of it, and thought it not at all 

 exaggerated ! In fact, geologists have no means of gauging 

 the infinitude of past time. There has been one prodigy of a 

 review, namely, an opposed ow^ (by Pictet,f the palseontologist, 

 in the Bib. Universelle of Geneva) which \^ perfectly fair and 



* See the quotations which follow the present letter. 



f Fran9ois Jules Pictet, in the ' Archives des Sciences de la Biblio- 

 theqvie Universelle,' Mars i860. The article is written in a courteous and 

 considerate tone, and concludes by saying that the ' Origin ' will be of 

 real value to naturalists, especially if they are not led away by its seduc- 

 tive arguments to believe in the dangerous doctrine of modification. A 

 passage which seems to have struck my father as being valuable, and op- 

 posite which he has made double pencil marks and written the word 

 "good," is worth quoting: "La theorie de M. Darwin s'accorde mal avec 



