206 EVOLUTION [Chap. Ill 



Letter 142 I met your brother yesterday, who tells me you are coming 

 to town. 1 hope you will give me a hail. I long for a jaw 

 with you, and have much to speak to you about. 



You will have seen the e'claircissemcnt about the Eocene 

 monkeys of England. By a touch of the conjuring wand they 

 have been metamorphosed — a la Darwin — into Hyracotherian 

 pigs. 1 Would you believe it ? This even is a gross blunder. 

 They are not pigs. 



Letter 143 To Hugh Falconer. 



Down, Oct. 1st [1862]. 

 On my return home yesterday I found your letter and 

 MS., which I have read with extreme interest. Your note 

 and every word in your paper are expressed with the same 

 kind feeling which I have experienced from you ever since I 

 have had the happiness of knowing you. I value scientific 

 praise, but I value incomparably higher such kind feeling as 

 yours. There is not a single word in your paper to which I 

 could possibly object : I should be mad to do so ; its only 

 fault is perhaps its too great kindness. Your case seems the 

 most striking one which I have met with of the persistence of 

 specific characters. It is very much the more striking as it 

 relates to the molar teeth, which differ so much in the species 

 of the genus, and in which consequently I should have 

 expected variation. As I read on I felt not a little dumb- 

 founded, and thought to myself that whenever I came to this 

 subject I should have to be savage against myself ; and I 

 wondered how savage you would be. I trembled a little. 

 My only hope was that something could be made out of the 

 bog N. American forms, which you rank as a geographical 

 race ; and possibly hereafter out of the Sicilian species. 

 Guess, then, my satisfaction when I found that you yourself 

 made a loophole, 2 which I never, of course, could have guessed 



1 " On the Hyracotherian Character of the Lower Molars of the sup- 

 posed Macacus from the Eocene Sand of Kyson, Suffolk." Ann. Mag. 

 Nat. Hist., Vol. X., 1862, p. 240. In this note Owen stated that the teeth 

 which he had named Macacus {Ann. Mag., 1840, p. 191) most probably 

 belonged to Hyracothcrium cuniculus. See A Catalogue of Britisli 

 Fossil Vertebrata, A. S. Woodward and C. D. Sherborn, 1890, under 

 Hyracothcrium, p. 356 ; also Zittel's Handbuch dcr PaLcontologie 

 Abth. I., Bd. IV., Leipzig, 1891-93, p. 703. 



2 This perhaps refers to a passage {N. H. Review, 1863, p. 79) in 



