484 ON SPECIES 



groaning and growling and making an awful ado about 

 my Introd. Essay to V. D. L. Flora, which is a heretical, 

 hypothetical, clumsy, laboured, cumbrous rigmarole of what 

 I believe to be the correct ideas not yet fully developed, 

 owing to backward state of science. 



To George Bentham 



Kew : July 17, 1859. 



The Introd. Essay goes on very slowly indeed, many 

 thanks for your valuable hints, I have modified some of my 

 expressions (which conveyed more than I intended) accord- 

 ingly. On two points you and Gray are rather hard. 

 You expect me to frove or make out my case, and Gray 

 calls me hasty, precipitate, etc. Now my case is no more 

 capable of proof than the opposite doctrine of separate 

 creations, and I do not pretend to be able. I think I show 

 better cause for its probability than creationists can for 

 theirs, but this a matter of opinion : at any rate the 

 doctrine is conceivable and there is an immense deal in 

 aU the steps that lead to it ; whereas all the avenues to 

 further research are blocked by the opposite. On this point 

 and on Gray's objection I have said a few words in the con- 

 cluding paragraphs which you have not yet seen. Thwaites 

 has written to me on the subject evidently on Thomson's 

 suggestion, for Thwaites was once a devoted variationist 

 and I suppose is so still, though he writes cautioning me 

 not to commit myself. One of your arguments against is 

 favourable to me, if logically pursued, viz. that as to the 

 age of man being iUimitable, and yet never exceeding a 

 certain amount, viz. 1-200 years. Were then Methusaleh 

 and his contemporaries different species ? Then again as 

 regards Camelopard and shorter legged animals of its tribe 

 — ^their difference in that respect is not so great as between 

 a Skye terrier and Greyhound. After all the case is quite 

 analogous to the Science of Geology ; Lyell's views of 

 uniformity of action and immense periods were laughed at 

 by those born and bred to the doctrine of successive cata- 

 clysms in a world only 6000 years old, and I cannot help 

 feehng that the difficulty in this case of species is to conceive 

 time enough ; that however is not an impossibihty, but that 

 of special creations of highly organised beings is an impossible 



