242 p:\olution [Chap, hi 



Letter 168 on the continent. If I understand, you believe that 

 all islands were formerly united to continents, and then 

 received all their plants and none since ; and that on the 

 islands they have undergone less extinction and modifica- 

 tion than on the continent. The number of animal forms on 

 islands, very closely allied to those on continents, with a 

 few extremely distinct and anomalous, docs not seem to 

 mc well to harmonise with your supposed view of all 

 having formerly arrived or rather having been left together 

 on the island. 



Letter 169 To Asa Gray. 



Down, May 31st [1863?]. 



I was very glad to receive your review ' of De Candolle 

 a week ago. It seems to me excellent, and you speak out, 

 I think, more plainly in favour of derivation of species than 

 hitherto, though doubtfully about Natural Selection. Grant 

 the first, I am easy about the second. Do you not 

 consider such cases as all the orchids next thing to a 

 demonstration against Heer's view of species arising sud- 

 denly by monstrosities ? — it is impossible to imagine so 

 many co-adaptations being formed all by a chance blow. 

 Of course creationists would cut the enigma. 



Letter 170 To T. H. Huxley. 



June 27th [1863?] 



What are you doing now ? I have never yet got hold of 

 the Edinburgh Review, in which I hear you are well abused. 

 By the way, I heard lately from Asa Gray that Wyman was 

 delighted at " Man's Place." 2 I wonder who it is who pitches 

 weakly, but virulently into you, in the Anthropological Review. 

 How quiet Owen seems ! I do at last begin to believe that 

 he will ultimately fall in public estimation. What nonsense 

 he wrote in the Athenceum 3 on Heterogeny ! I saw in his 

 Aye-Aye 4 paper (I think) that he sneers at the manner in 



1 The review on De Candolle's work on the Oaks (A. Gray's Scientific 

 Papers, I., p. 130). 



2 Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, by T. H. Huxley, 1863. 



3 Athenceum, March 28th, 1863. See Life and Letters, III., p. 17. 



4 See Owen in the Trans. Zool. Soc, Vol. V. The sentence referred 

 to seems to be the following (p. 95) : " We know of no changes in 

 progress in the Island of Madagascar, necessitating a special quest of 

 wood-boring larvae by small quadrupeds of the Lemurine or Sciurine 

 types of organisation." 



