i88S ARGUMENT OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 205 



If you don't mind, I should be glad if you would run your 

 eye over the thing when I get as far as the proof stage Lord 

 knows when that will be. 



A few days later he wrote again on the same subject, 

 after reading the obituary of Asa Gray, the first American 

 supporter of Darwin's theory. 



March 23. I suppose Dana has sent you his obituary of Asa 

 Gray. 



The most curious feature I note in it is that neither of them 

 seems to have mastered the principles of Darwin's theory. See 

 the bottom of p. 19 and the top of p. 20. As I understand Dar- 

 win there is nothing " Anti-Darwinian ' : in either of the two 

 doctrines mentioned. 



Darwin has left the causes of variation and the question 

 whether it is limited or directed by external conditions perfectly 

 open. 



The only serious work I have been attempting lately is Dar- 

 win's obituary. I do a little every day, but get on very slowly. 

 I have read the life and letters all through again, and the Origin 

 for the sixth or seventh time, becoming confirmed in my opinion 

 that it is one of the most difficult books to exhaust that ever 

 was written. 



I have a notion of writing out the argument of the Origin in 

 systematic shape as a sort of primer of Darwinismus. I have 

 not much stuff left in me, and it would be as good a way of using 

 what there is as I know of. What do you think? Ever yours, 



T. H. HUXLEY. 



In reply to this Sir J. Hooker was inclined to make the 

 biographer alone responsible for the confusion noted in the 

 obituary of Asa Gray. He writes : 



March 27, 1888. 



DEAR HUXLEY Dana's Gray arrived yesterday, and I turned 

 to pp. 19, 20. I see nothing Anti-Darwinian in the passages, 

 and I do not gather from them that Gray did. 



I did not follow Gray into his later comments on Darwinism, 

 and I never read his Darwiniana. My recollection of his attitude 

 after acceptance of the doctrine, and during the first few years 

 of his active promulgation of it, is that he understood it clearly, 

 but sought to harmonise it with his prepossessions, without dis- 

 turbing its physical principles in any way. 



