MEMOIR. Ixxiii 
public, but sometimes the event falsifies the calculations. Old Murray used 
to say to me, ‘‘The more complete you make your book, Lyell, the fewer 
I shall sell of it.’’ ’ 
«Sir Charles Lyell has the appearance of a fidgety man not well at ease 
with himself. He is very greedy of fame, and proud of his aristocratic friends 
and acquaintances, He does not seem to be a very ready man; his learning 
does not appear to be at his fingers’ ends; so that when a subject is suddenly 
presented to him he has difficulty in collecting his scattered thoughts and 
bringing forth what he knows upon it. But then he is getting an old man 
now. Mr. Davison told me that he was a very hesitating writer, and re-wrote 
every sentence three or four times on the average, as Mr. Davison confessed 
to me was his own case. But, like a well-bred gentleman, Sir Charles can 
become very sociable, and evidently likes a good dinner with brilliant con- 
versation ; Darwin says he likes to hear himself talk. At the Geological Club 
dinner when I sat at his left fronting Sir Roderick Murchison and Bishop 
Colenso, he made me laugh by retailing a very good thing. The conversation 
ran on the comparative merits of the scientific hypothesis of the origin of 
man and the Biblical man: ‘ Why,’ says he, ‘the question resolves itself 
into few words; Is man modified mud or modified monkey.’ But he gave 
it not as his own. 
‘* Tuesday, December 1st.—\ have had several replies to my application 
for advice about abridgment to several of my friends. Darwin is too ill to 
write, but kindly dictates a few precious words. He is rather astonished that 
Murray requires two hundred pages of abridgment, but would not object to 
a little shortening, saying that there are few books which would not be the 
better for it. He had himself to shorten his Yournal for a second edition, 
and although it gave him great pain at the time, he had been glad of it ever 
since.”’ 
“Thursday, February 11th, 1864.—Went to-day to Oxford to see Professor 
Westwood, and take notes of the species of J/aztzde¢ in the Hopean collection, 
which are to serve with the British Museum and Saundersian collections as 
the material for my monograph. After working all day on Friday we had a 
very pleasant evening at Westwood’s house. Wallace arrived in the morning 
by agreement, and Westwood invited Dr. Rolleston, Rev. Mr. Rowley 
(missionary just arrived from the Zambesi), and Rev. Mr. Tozer to dinner 
to meet us. Rolleston is a very entertaining fellow; evidently fond of his 
profession—physiologist and comparative anatomist—thoroughly well up in 
the literature of his subject, argumentative, lively, and good-humoured in 
conversation. He started a discussion about the American civil war, and 
cudgelled heavily for the Northerners; Wallace pluckily taking the part of 
the Southerners against him. The impression left on Wallace by this dis- 
cussion, was that Rolleston was a prejudiced man; that he had not come to 
his opinions as a scientific man ought to do, by a thorough conscientious 
thinking out of the subject, but was guided to it by feelings. On other 
topics Rolleston’s conversation was instructive; amongst them was that of 
the recent innovation in the classification of the Vertebrata, proposed by 
Professor Huxley in his lectures at the Royal College of Surgeons. 
‘‘ My chief motive for making this entry is to record what I learnt relative 
to the state of opinion in this seat of orthodoxy on the great subjects of 
