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PUBLICATION OF THE ' OEIGIN ' 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. Eecord, 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 fossihzed condition ^ of the plants that have existed, 

 and that not tooVoo of 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 



