4oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



me into atoms. He does not in the least appreciate the difference in 

 my views and Lamarck's, as explaining adaptation, the principle of 

 divergence, the increase of dominant groups, and the almost necessary 

 extinction of the less dominant and smaller groups, etc. 



To Asa Gray. 



Down, July 23rd [1862]. 



I received several days ago two large packets, but have as yet read 

 only your letter ; for we have been in fearful distress, and I could attend 

 to nothing. Our poor boy had the rare case of second rash and sore 

 throat . . . ; and, as if this was not enough, a most serious attack of 

 erysipelas, with typhoid symptoms. I despaired of his life; but this 

 evening he has eaten one mouthful, and I think has passed the crisis. 

 He has lived on port wine every three-quarters of an hour, day and 

 night. This evening, to our astonishment, he asked whether his stamps 

 were safe, and I told him of one sent by you, and that he should see 

 it to-morrow. He answered, 'I should awfully like to see it now'; so 

 with difficulty he opened his eyelids and glanced at it, and, with a 

 sigh of satisfaction, said, 'All right.' Children are one's greatest 

 happiness, but often and often a still greater misery. A man of science 

 ought to have none perhaps not a wife; for then there would be 

 nothing in this wide world worth caring for, and a man might (whether 

 he could is another question) work away like a Trojan. I hope in a 

 few days to get my brains in order, and then I will pick out all your 

 orchid letters, and return them in hopes of your making use of 

 them. . . . 



Of all the carpenters for knocking the right nail on the head, you 

 are the very best; no one else has perceived that my chief interest in 

 my orchid book has been that it was a ' flank movement ' on the enemy. 

 I live in such solitude that I hear nothing, and have no idea to what 

 you allude about Bentham and the orchids and species. But I must 

 enquire. 



By the way, one of my chief enemies (the sole one who has annoyed 

 me), namely Owen, I hear has been lecturing on birds; and admits 

 that all have descended from one, and advances as his own idea that 

 the oceanic wingless birds have lost their wings by gradual disuse. He 

 never alludes to me, or only with bitter sneers, and coupled with Buf- 

 fon and the Vestiges. 



Well, it has been an amusement to me this first evening, scribbling 

 as egotistically as usual about myself and my doings; so you must 

 forgive me, as I know well your kind heart will do. I have managed 

 to skim the newspaper, but had not heart to read all the bloody 

 details. Good God! what will the end be? Perhaps we are too de- 



