PUBLICATION OF THE ' OKIGIN ' 511 



did not fully appreciate them all, and there are many little 

 matters I hope one day to talk over with you. I saw a 

 highly flattering notice in the ' English Churchman ' short 

 and not at all entering into discussion, but praising you and 

 your book and talking patronisingly of the Doctrine ! 



Bentham and Henslow will still shake their heads, I 

 fancy. 



Ever yours affectionately, 



Jos. D. HOOKER. 



P.S. I expect to think that I would rather be author of 

 your book than of any other on Nat. Hist. Science. 



Kew : January, about 20th, 1860. 



DEAR DARWIN, I have had another talk with Bentham, 

 who is greatly agitated by your book evidently the stern 

 keen intellect is aroused and he finds it is too late to halt 

 between two opinions ; how it will go we shall see. I am 

 intensely interested in what he shall come to and never 

 broach the subject to him. 



I finished Geolog. Evidence Chapters yesterday : they 

 are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such 

 forcible objections as you still hold them to be. I would 

 say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imper- 

 fection of Geol. Kecord, though no language can be stronger 

 or arguments fairer and sounder against it. Of course I 

 am influenced by Botany and the conviction that we have 

 in a fossilized condition ~ of the plants that have existed, 

 and that not TooVoo" f those we have are recognisable 

 specifically. I never saw so clearly just the fact that it is 

 not intermediates between existing species we want but 

 between these and the unknown tertium quid. 



You certainly make a hobby of Nat. Selection and 

 probably ride it too hard that is a necessity of your case. 

 If improvement of the creation by variation doctrine is 

 conceivable, it will be by unburdening your theory of Natural 

 Selection, which at first sight seems overstrained ; i.e. to 

 account for too much. I think too that some of your 

 difficulties which you override by Nat. Selection may give 

 way before other explanations, but oh Lord ! how little 

 we do know and have known, to be so advanced in know- 

 ledge by one theory. If we thought ourselves to be knowing 



