ON THE "ATLANTIS" THEORY. 53 



"early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my 

 views pretty fully, and I began at once to do so on a 

 scale three or four times as extensive as that which 

 was afterwards folio Aved in my * Origin of Species.' " 

 This work he began on May 14th, and, after working 

 steadily until June, 1858, had written about half the 

 book, in ten chapters, when he received the celebrated 

 letter from Wallace, which altered everything. 



At this period we get interesting evidence of his 

 extraordinary insight in the strong protests he makes 

 against the Atlantis hypothesis of Edward Forbes, 

 and the other vast continental extensions which 

 naturalists did not hesitate to make in order to 

 explain the existence of species common to countries 

 separated by wide tracts of the ocean. These lost 

 continents were as generally accepted as they were 

 freely proposed. Arid yet we find that, even then, 

 one thinker far ahead of his time saw clearly enough 

 — as the Challenger Expedition twenty years later 

 proved beyond all doubt — that the geological evi- 

 dence is against such extension, and that the means 

 of distribution possessed by animals are such as to 

 render the supposition unnecessary. 



In June, 1856, he writes to Lyell: " My blood gets 

 hot with passion and turns cold alternately at the 

 geological strides, which many of your disciples are 

 taking " ; and after mentioning the extension of 

 continents proposed by many leading naturalists, he 

 says: "If you do not stop this, if there be a lower 

 region for the punishment of geologists, I believe, my 



