specific Genesis 113 



Here I take the opportunity of acknowledging, as I have 

 also done in my second edition, that an American naturalist 

 — Professor Theophilus Parsons, of Harvard University — put 

 forth, more than ten years ago, views ^ very similar to those I 

 enunciated in my Genesis of Species, though they were of 

 course unkno^vn to me when I published my first edition. 

 Mr. Wright, however, is mistaken when he states that I am 

 ' indebted to Mr Galton ' for my conception of specific genesis 

 although I made use, with due acknowledgment, of that 

 gentleman's illustration of a conception analogous to 

 mine. 



Mr. Wright has been so unfortunate as to misapprehend 

 Mr. Murphy also. Speaking of spheres and crystals, that 

 gentleman is quoted as saying : — 



' Attraction, whether gravitative or capillary, produces the spheri- 

 cal form ; the spherical form does not produce attraction.' 



Upon this Mr. Wright remarks : — 



' No abstraction ever produced any other abstraction, much less a 

 concrete thing. The abstract laws of attraction never produced any 

 body, spherical or polyhedral.' 



But really not only has Mr. Murphy not said they did, but 

 his very expression Mr. Wright will, I am sure, regret to see 

 has been changed by my critic ; and the result is, that Mr. 

 Murphy is unlucky enough to be blamed for what he never 

 said, or apparently thought of saying. This is all the more 

 hard because Mr. Wright goes on to observe, ' it was actual 

 forces acting in definite ways that made the sphere or crystal,' 

 which is precisely what Mr. Murphy himself said. 



Mr. Wright goes on to make a statement which I confess 

 is utterly beyond me. He says : — 



'Moreover, in the case of crystals, neither these forces nor the 

 abstract law of their action in producing definite crystals reside in the 

 ^ See the July number of the American Journal of Science and Art for 1860. 

 VOL. II. H 



