LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN. 389 



first led me to the subject : especially the case of the Galapagos Islands. 

 I hope to go to press in the early part of next month. It will be a 

 small volume of about five hundred pages or so. I will of course 

 send you a copy. I forget whether I told you that Hooker, who is 

 our best British botanist and perhaps the best in the world, is a full 

 convert, and is now going immediately to publish his confession of 

 faith; and I expect daily to see proof-sheets. Huxley is changed, 

 and believes in mutation of species : whether a convert to us, I do 

 not quite know. We shall live to see all the younger men converts. 

 My neighbour and an excellent naturalist, J. Lubbock, is an enthu- 

 siastic convert. I see that you are doing great work in the Archi- 

 pelago; and most heartily do I sympathise with you. For God's sake 

 take care of your health. There have been few such noble labourers 

 in the cause of Natural Science as you are. 



P. S. You cannot tell how I admire your spirit, in the manner 

 in which you have taken all that was done about publishing all our 

 papers. I had actually written a letter to you, stating that I would 

 not publish anything before you had published. I had not sent that 

 letter to the post when I received one from Lyell and Hooker, urging 

 me to send some MS. to them, and allow them to act as they thought 

 fair and honestly to both of us; and I did so. 



To T. H. Huxley. 



July 20th [I860], 



Many thanks for your pleasant letter. I agree to every word you 

 say about Eraser and the Quarterly. I have had some really admirable 

 letters from Hopkins. I do not suppose he has ever troubled his head 

 about geographical distribution, classification, morphologies, etc., and 

 it is only those who have that will feel any relief in having some sort 

 of rational explanation of such facts. Is it not grand the way in which 

 the Bishop asserts that all such facts are explained by ideas in God's 

 mind? The Quarterly is uncommonly clever; and I chuckled much 

 at the way my grandfather and self are quizzed. I could here and 

 there see Owen's hand. By the way, how comes it that you were not 

 attacked? Does Owen begin to find it more prudent to leave you 

 alone? I would give five shillings to know what tremendous blunder 

 the Bishop made; for I see that a page has been cancelled and a nev 

 page gummed in. 



I am indeed most thoroughly contented with *the progress of 

 opinion. From all that I hear from several quarters, it seems that 

 Oxford did the subject great good. It is of enormous importance the 

 showing the world that a few first-rate men are not afraid of express- 

 ing their opinion. I see daily more and more plainly that my unaided 



