1872.] 'ORIGIN,' SIXTH EDITION. 1 53 



was the point in Mr. Mivart's book which had struck most 

 readers in England. 



It is a striking proof of how wide and general had become 

 the acceptance of his views, that my father found it necessary 

 to insert (sixth edition, p. 424), the sentence : " As a record 

 of a former state of things, I have retained in the foregoing 

 paragraphs and also elsewhere, several sentences which imply 

 that naturalists believe in the separate creation of each 

 species ; and I have been much censured for having thus 

 expressed myself. But undoubtedly this was the general 

 belief when the first edition of the present work appeared. . . 

 Now things are wholly changed, and almost every naturalist 

 admits the great principle of evolution." 



A small correction introduced into this sixth edition is 

 connected with one of his minor papers : " Note on the habits 

 of the Pampas Woodpecker." * The paper in question was a 

 reply to Mr. Hudson's remarks on the woodpecker in a 

 previous number of the same journal. The last sentence of 

 my father's paper is worth quoting for its temperate tone : 

 " Finally, I trust that Mr. Hudson is mistaken when he says 

 that any one acquainted with the habits of this bird might 

 be induced to believe that I 'had purposely wrested the 

 truth ' in order to prove my theory. He exonerates me 

 from this charge ; but I should be loath to think that there 

 are many naturalists who, without any evidence, would 

 accuse a fellow-worker of telling a deliberate falsehood to 

 prove his theory." In the fifth edition of the ' Origin,' p. 220, 

 he wrote : — 



" Yet as I can assert not only from my own observation, but 

 from that of the accurate Azara, it [the ground woodpecker] 

 never climbs a tree." In the sixth edition, p. 142, the passage 

 runs " in certain large districts it does not climb trees." And 

 he goes on to give Mr. Hudson's statement, that in other 

 regions it does frequent trees. 



* Zoolog. Soc. Proc. 1870. 



