'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' 



69 



sub-orders and so forth ; and I can remember the very spot '' 

 in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solu- 

 tion occurred to me ; and this was long after I had come to 

 Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the modified off- 

 spring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become 

 adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy 

 of nature. 



Early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views 

 pretty fully, and I began at once to do so on a scale three or 

 four times as extensive as that which was afterwards followed 

 in my ' Origin of Species ; ' yet it was only an abstract of the 

 materials which I had collected, and I got through about 

 half the work on this scale. But my plans were over- 

 thrown, for early in the summer <^ 1858 Mr. Wallace, who 

 was then in the Malay archipelago, sent me an essay " On 

 the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the 

 Original Type ; " and this essay contained exactly the 

 same theory as mine. Mr. Wallace expressed the wish that 

 if I thought well of his essay, I should send it to Lyell for 

 perusal. 



The circumstances under which I consented at the re- 

 quest of Lyell and Hooker to allow of an abstract from my 

 MS., together with a letter to Asa Gray, dated September 5, 

 1857, to be published at the same time with Wallace's Essay, 

 are given in the ' Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean 

 Society,' 1858, p. 45. I was at first very unwilling to consent, 

 as I thought Mr. Wallace might consider my doing so un- 

 justifiable, for I did not then know how generous and noble 

 was his disposition. The extract from my MS. and the letter 

 to Asa Gray had neither been intended for publication, and 

 were badly written. Mr. Wallace's essay, on the other hand, 

 was admirably expressed and quite clear. Nevertheless, our 

 joint productions excited very little attention, and the only 

 published notice of them which I can remember was by 

 Professor Haughton of Dublin, whose verdict was that all 

 that was new in them was false, and what was true was old. 

 This shows how necessary it is that any new view should be 



