XTI.] be right jof Spcries. 257 



book to read if by reading is implied the full com- 

 prehension of an author's meaning. 



We do not speak jestingly in saying that it is Mr. 

 Darwin's misfortune to know more about the question he 

 has taken up than any man living. Personally and 

 practically exercised in zoology, in minute anatomy, in 

 geology ; a student of geographical distribution, not on 

 maps and in museums only, but by long voyages and 

 laborious collection ; having largely advanced each of 

 these branches of science, and having spent many years 

 in. gathering and sifting materials for his present work, 

 the store of accurately registered facts upon which the 

 author of the " Origin of Species " is able to draw at 

 will is prodigious. 



But this very superabundance of matter must have 

 been embarrassing to a writer who, for the present, can 

 only put forward an abstract of his views ; and thence it 

 arises, perhaps, that notwithstanding the clearness of the 

 style, those who attempt fairly to digest the book find 

 much of it a sort of intellectual pemmican a mass of 

 facts crushed and pounded into shape, rather than held 

 together by the ordinary medium of an obvious logical 

 bond : due attention will, without doubt, discover this 

 bond, but it is often hard to find. 



Again, from sheer want of room, much has to be 

 taken for granted which might readily enough be proved ; 

 and hence, while the adept, who can supply the missing 

 links in the evidence from his own knowledge, discovers 

 fresh proof of the singular thoroughness with which all 

 difficulties have been considered and all unjustifiable 

 suppositions avoided, at every reperusal of Mr. Darwin's 

 pregnant paragraphs, the novice in biology is apt to 

 complain of the frequency of what he fancies is gra- 

 tuitous assumption. 



Thus while it may be doubted if, for some years, any 



8 



