150 CHARLES DARWm. 



One of the most interesting of the countless 

 examples of misunderstanding is contained in a 

 recently published letter from W. S. Macleay to Robert 

 Lowe.^ This letter was written from Elizabeth Bay, 

 and is dated May, 1860, evidently just after the first 

 edition of the " Origin/' a copy of which had been sent 

 by Robert Lowe, had been read by Macleay. 



"Again if this primordial cell had a Creator, as Darwin 

 seems to admit, I do not see what we gain by denying the 

 Creator, as Darwin does, all management of it after its creation. 

 Lamarck was more logical in supposing it to have existed of 

 itself from all eternity — indeed this is the principal difference 

 that I see between this theory of Darwin's and that of 

 Lamarck, who propounded everything essential in the former 

 theory, in a work now rather rare— his ' Philosophie Zoologique.' 

 But you may see an abridgment of it in so common a book as 

 his ' Histoire Nat. des Animaux Vertebres,' vol. i., pp. 188, et 

 seq. — Edit. 1818, where the examples given of natural selection 

 are the gasteropod molluscs. . . . Natural selection (some- 

 times called 'struggles' by Darwin) is identical with the 

 'Besoins des Choses' of Lamarck, who, by means of his 

 hypothesis, for instance, assigns the constant stretching of the 

 neck to reach the acacia leaves as the cause of the extreme 

 length of it in the giraffe ; much in the same way the black 

 bear, according to Darwin, became a whale, w^hich I believe as 

 little as his other assertion that our progenitors anciently had 

 gills — only they had dropped off by want of use in the course 

 of myriads of generations." 



I had long been anxious to possess a copy of 

 the first edition of the "Origin," and was fortunate 

 enough to come across one about the time when 

 Macleay 's letter was pointed out to me by my wife. 



* "Life of Lord Sherbrooke," Vol. II. (pp. 205-206), Longmans 

 & Co. London, 1893. 



