516 ' OEIGIN * AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA ' 



and Botanical Association, which his friends thought rather 

 unworthy of the occasion, and which in the following October 

 he sent to Darwin ' with the writer's repentance.' 



Kew : Tuesday, 1860. 



MY DEAR HARVEY, I send you an answer from Darwin, 

 to whom I wrote for information as to Primroses, etc. I 

 never went into the case myself ; regarding it as one that 

 wanted working out by Herbarium as well as garden. You 

 will see that he offers you his MS. ! He is a noble fellow ; 

 he little knows the coals of fire he is heaping on your head ! 

 Again let me caution you how you play with these questions. 

 You have not the faintest conception of their difficulty, 

 magnitude, and importance, I do assure you ; study the 

 question, experiment a little, or earnestly seek for light by 

 taking up some great orders or groups etc. and endeavour- 

 ing to understand the relations between all the tribes, genera; 

 and varieties, leaving species as species out of view for a 

 time. Do not snatch at superficial observations and commit 

 yourself to superficial observations on them. Keep your 

 opinion of species and confirm it, if you can, but if you are 

 going to write about it, study it first ; and behave like a 

 Naturalist of 30 years' standing before the world, not like 

 a superficial geologist or ignorant priest. I say ignorant 

 advisedly, for I hold Whately and Sedgwick to be as really 

 ignorant of the fundaments of Natural History as I am of 

 Church History or you of fluxions. The eyes of the intelligent 

 unscientific enquirers are now upon us, and I am most 

 anxious that, for the credit of the age we live in, some 

 naturalists at any rate should appear as earnest enquirers 

 and honest workers, and should show that we have some- 

 thing more and better to show for our creed in the matter 

 of species, than what satisfied us a quarter of a century ago, 

 when the higher departments of Biology were nowhere. 

 There is plenty to be said on both sides of the question, but 

 nothing worth saying that is not the product of thought and 

 study. Above all things remember that this reception of 

 Darwin's book is the exact parallel of the reception that 

 every great progressive move in science has met with in 

 all ages ; it is widely different from the reception of the 

 * Vestiges.' No good naturalist praised it, whilst seven of 

 the ablest men of this day (and a host of smaller fry) pro- 



