1858-64.] ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 105 



tire. Parts of it T admired greatly, parts I laughed at 

 till my sides were almost sore ; other parts I read with 

 absolute sorrow, because I think them utterly false and 

 grievously mischievous. Many of your wide conclu- 

 sions are based upon assumptions which can neither 

 be proved nor disproved. . . . Darwin has deserted 

 utterly the inductive track and taken the broadway of 

 hypothesis " (" Life and Letters of Adam Sedgwick," 

 Vol. II., pp. 356-357; Cambridge, 1890). Other cele- 

 brated English naturalists, like A. Murray, J. E. Gray, 

 Harvey, and Henslow, would have none of it. 



On the continent of Europe, the only open sympa- 

 thizers were two botanists, Alphonse de Candolle of 

 Geneva and Charles V. Naudin 1 of Paris ; and as a 

 matter of course, the learned and always most progres- 

 sive geologist, J. J. d'Omalius d'Halloy, the steadfast 

 friend and pupil of Lamarck, but he was rather sur- 



1 Previous to Darwin's publication, the French botanist, Naudin, had 

 made some remarkable researches on the hybridization of plants; but all 

 his efforts to penetrate the mechanism of variation of species had been 

 unsuccessful. Another French botanist, Joseph Decaisne, desirous to 

 prove for himself the question of variations, made a series of experiments, 

 lasting more than twenty years, on the genus Pirns. He chose a rare 

 example of cultivation of the pear tree, at the Garden of the Chartreux, 

 Palace of Luxembourg. Paris, which had continued without interruption 

 during several centuries. The number of typical species or varieties of 

 pear trees cultivated there had reached, in 1871, the large number of 

 fourteen hundred. As a result of his experiment, Decaisne arrived at the 

 unexpected conclusion that all pear trees belong to an unique type, 

 although a polymorph one; and writing to a friend in 1868, he said, "Si 

 la nature n'a pas employe d'autre precede [referring to the natural selec- 

 tion of Darwin] pour faconner le monde actuel, il ne doit pas etre difficile 

 de la prendre sur le fait," to which he added, " Je voudrois voir cela de 

 mes yeux." Here lies the real difficulty, the impossibility of seeing 

 with one's own eyes the arrival of a new species. 



