520 ' OEIGIN f AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA ' 



that I was aware of Darwin's views fourteen years before I 

 adopted them, and I have done so solely and entirely from an 

 independent study of plants themselves. 



Bentham, Thwaites, and Thomson are all shaken to the 

 bottom. Asa Gray writes as differently as possible now, 

 from what he did on first reading Darwin and Wallace. 

 Henslow is fast changing and defending f at least of Darwin's 

 book ! at Cambridge against Sedgwick and Phillips, and is 

 urgently recommending his students to buy the book and 

 read it carefully. I have no wish to convert you, but I 

 am extremely anxious that you should not commit yourself 

 in your present state of very partial knowledge and strong 

 feeling on a subject that requires years of thought and the 

 calmest study, and above all a singleness of mind in seeking 

 for truth at all hazards. 



It is one thing to say that Darwin has gone far too far 

 (though I do not think so), and another to defend the present 

 weak illogical prejudices and ignorant attacks of geologists 

 and theologians, or that worst of all class of scientifical- 

 geological-theologians like Haughton, Miller, Sedgwick, etc., 

 who are like asses between bundles of hay, distorting their 

 consciences to meet the double call on their public profession. 

 The difficulties (scientific) of Darwin's views are appalling, 

 but of the old doctrine insuperable. 



Ever yours, 



Jos. D. HOOKER. 



As to the article in the July Quarterly Review, the secret 

 of its authorship soon leaked out. It was written by the 

 Bishop of Oxford, a frequent contributor to the Quarterly. 1 

 Internal evidence pointed to the prompter of his scientific 

 ignorance. * He and Owen,' writes Hooker to Anderson in 

 July, ' have published a most ridiculous article in the Quarterly 

 against Darwin, absurd for its egregious ignorance and blunders 

 in Nat. Science.' To scientific readers the most significant 

 point about it was that one of the printed pages had been cut 

 out and another substituted. * What gigantic blunder had 

 been detected at the last moment ? ' 



This ill-omened conjunction led up to the first decisive 



1 This was acknowledged in 1874, when the Bishop republished the article 

 among his Contributions to the Quarterly. 



