182 DARWINIANISM. 



evolution as evolution that they stood by him. The 

 three nearest him in conviction were certainly Wallace, 

 Hooker, and Huxley ; but there is evidence that 

 would justify as much as that to be said even of 

 them. 



As for Carpenter, Mr. Darwin, in his delight, just in 

 any way, " to have got a great physiologist on our side," 

 is quite cheerful in avowing to him (ii. 238), " I look 

 at it as immaterial whether we go quite the same 

 lengths ; " but, for all that, when Carpenter, in his letter 

 to the Reviewer of his Introduction to the Study of 

 Foraminifera (in which it is, somewhat anti-Darwinianly, 

 pointed out that Foraminifera, in regard to their primi- 

 tive type or types, diverge as they may, "still remain 

 Foraminifera "), protests against " his (the Reviewer's) 

 foregone conclusion that I have accepted Mr. Darwin as 

 my master, and his hypothesis as my guide," Mr. Darwin 

 pithily observes (iii. 19), "the chief object of his letter 

 seems to me to be to show that though he has touched 

 pitch he is not defiled." 



Disagreement on the part of Asa Gray is acknow- 

 ledged by Mr. Darwin when (ii. 386) he writes him, 

 " It is really almost a pleasure to receive stabs from so 

 smooth, polished, and sharp a dagger as your pen ; " but 

 there are several letters (in the same neighbourhood) in 

 proof of their essential differences especially on design. 



When Mr. Wallace (iii. 46), objecting to the words 

 natural selection, remarks, " Nature does not so much 

 select special varieties as exterminate the most unfavour- 

 able ones," we really might quite reasonably suspect that, 

 after all, Mr. Wallace was not, in the main consideration, 

 at home with the principle of Mr. Darwin. With Mr. 

 I >arwin it is not a " variety " that is in the first place 

 selected, but only a " variation" come how it may. Mr. 

 Durwin does not overlook extermination, but extermina- 



