330 EVOLUTION [Chap.V 



Letter 243 what he means about design, 1 — I cannot in the least under- 

 stand, for I presume he docs not believe in special inter- 

 positions. Herschel's was a good sneer. It made me put in 

 the simile about Raphael's Madonna,- when describing in the 

 Descent of Man the manner of formation of the wondrous 

 ball-and-socket ornaments, and I will swear to the truth of 

 this case. 



You know the oak-leaved variety of the common honey- 

 suckle ; I could not persuade a lady that this was not the 

 result of the honeysuckle climbing up a young oak tree ! Is 

 this not like the Viola case ? 



Letter 244 To John Lubbock (Lord Avebury). 



Haredene, Albury, Guildford, Aug. 12th [187 1]. 



I hope the proof-sheets having been sent here will not 

 inconvenience you. I have read them with infinite satisfac- 

 tion, and the whole discussion strikes me as admirable. I 

 have no books here, and wish much I could see a plate of 



1 See British Association Report, p. cv. Lord Kelvin speaks very 

 doubtfully of evolution. After quoting tbe concluding passage of the 

 Origin, he goes on, " I have omitted two sentences . . . describing 

 briefly the hypothesis of ' the origin of species by Natural Selection,' 

 because I have always felt that this hypothesis does not contain the true 

 theory of evolution, if evolution there has been in biology " (the italics 

 arc not in the original). Lord Kelvin then describes as a "most 

 valuable and instructive criticism," Sir John Herschel's remark that the 

 doctrine of Natural Selection is " too like the Laputan method of making 

 books, and that it did not sufficiently take into account a continually 

 guiding and controlling intelligence." But it should be remembered that 

 it was in this address of Lord Kelvin's that he suggested the possibility 

 of " seed-bearing meteoric stones moving about through space " inocu- 

 lating the earth with living organisms ; and if he assumes that the whole 

 population of the globe is to be traced back to these "moss-grown 

 fragments from the ruins of another world," it is obvious that he believes 

 in a form of evolution, and one in which a controlling intelligence is not 

 very obvious, at all events not in the initial and all-important stage. 



■ See Descent of Man, II., p. 141. Darwin says that no one will 

 attribute the shading of the "eyes " on the wings of the Argus pheasant 

 to the " fortuitous concourse of atoms of colouring-matter." He goes on 

 to say that the development of the ball-and-socket effect by means of 

 Natural Selection seems at first as incredible as that "one of Raphael's 

 Madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of 

 paint." The remark of Herschel's, emoted in Life and Letters, II., p. 241, 

 that the Origin illustrates the "law of higgledy-piggledy," is probably a 



