242 



MISCELLANEA — (continued). 



[1880. 



which has appeared within the last twenty years.* The 

 general appearance of the copy which you have sent me is 

 worthy of its contents, and I can say nothing stronger than 

 this. 



With cordial thanks, believe me, 



Yours very sincerely, 



Charles Darwin. 



[In November, 1880, he received an account of a flood in 

 Brazil, from which his friend Fritz Miiller had barely escaped 

 with his life. My father immediately wrote to Hermann Miiller 

 anxiously enquiring whether his brother had lost books, instru- 

 ments, &c, by this accident, and begging in that case " for the 

 sake of science, so that science should not suffer," to be allowed 

 to help in making good the loss. Fortunately, however, the 

 injury to Fitz M tiller's possessions was not so great as was 

 expected, and the incident remains only as a memento, which 

 I trust cannot be otherwise than pleasing to the survivor, of 

 the friendship of the two naturalists. 



In 'Nature' (November 1 1, 1880) appeared a letter from 

 my father, which is, I believe, the only instance in which 

 he wrote publicly with anything like severity. The late 

 Sir Wyville Thomson wrote, in the Introduction to the 

 ' Voyage of the Challenger ' : " The character of the abyssal 

 fauna refuses to give the least support to the theory which 

 refers the evolution of species to extreme variation guided 

 only by natural selection." My father, after characterising 

 these remarks as a "standard of criticism, not uncommonly 

 reached by theologians and metaphysicians," goes on to take 



* Mr. Huxley has well pointed 

 out (' Science and Culture,' p. 317) 

 that : "In 1875, the discovery of 

 the toothed birds of the cretaceous 

 formation in N. America, by Prof. 

 Marsh, completed the series of 

 transitional forms between birds 

 and reptiles, and removed Mr. 



Darwin's proposition that, 'many 

 animal forms of life have been 

 utterly lost, through which the 

 early progenitors of birds were 

 formerly connected with the early 

 progenitors of the other vertebrate 

 classes,' from the region of hypo- 

 thesis to that of demonstrable fact." 



