156 EVOLUTION [Chap. Ill 



Letter 106 there must have been at all times an Arctic region. I found 

 the speculation got too complex, as it seemed to me, to be 

 worth following out. 



I have been doing some more interesting work with 

 orchids. Talk of adaptation in woodpeckers, 1 some of the 

 orchids beat it. 



I showed the case to Elizabeth Wedgwood, and her 

 remark was, " Now you have upset your own book, for you 

 won't persuade me that this could be effected by Natural 

 Selection." 



Letter 107 To T. H. Huxley. 



July 20th [i860]. 



Many thanks for your pleasant letter. I agree to every 

 word you say about Fraser and the Quarterly? I have had 

 some really admirable letters from Hopkins. I do not 

 suppose he has ever troubled his head about geographical 

 distribution, classification, morphologies, etc., and it is only 

 those who have that will feel any relief in having some sort 

 of rational explanation of such facts. Is it not grand the 

 way in which the Bishop asserts that all such facts are ex- 

 plained by ideas in God's mind ? The Quarterly is un- 

 commonly clever ; and I chuckled much at the way my 

 grandfather and self are quizzed. I could here and there see 

 Owen's hand. By the way, how comes it that you were not 

 attacked ? Does Owen begin to find it more prudent to leave 

 you alone? I would give five shillings to know what 

 tremendous blunder the Bishop made ; for I see that a page 

 has been cancelled and a new page gummed in. 



I am indeed most thoroughly contented with the progress 

 of opinion. From all that I hear from several quarters, it 

 seems that Oxford 3 did the subject great good. It is of 



1 " Can a more striking instance of adaptation be given than that of 

 a woodpecker for climbing trees and seizing insects in the chinks of the 

 bark?" {Origin of Species, Ed. VI., p. 141). 



2 Bishop Wilberforce's review of the Origin in the Quarterly Review, 

 July, i860, was republished in his Collected Essays, 1874. See Life and 

 Letters, II., p. 182, and II., p. 324, where some quotations from the 

 review are given. For Hopkins' review in Eraser's Magazine, June, 

 i860, see Life and Letters, II., 314. 



3 An account of the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 

 i860 is given in the Life and Letters, II., p. 320, and a fuller account 



