1863.] LETTER IN THE ' ATHEN.EUM.' 21 



bats on islands, and then with infinite slyness have quoted 

 your amended sentence, with your parenthesis ("as I fully 

 believe ") * ; I do not think you can be annoyed at my doing 

 this, and you see, that I am determined as far as I can, that 

 the public shall see how far you go. This is the first time I 

 liave ever said a word for myself in any journal, and it shall, 

 I think, be the last. My letter is short, and no great things. 

 I was extremely concerned to see Falconer's disrespectful 

 and virulent letter. I like extremely your answer just read ; 

 you take a lofty and dignified position, to which you are so 

 well entitled. f 



I suspect that if you had inserted a few more superlatives in 

 speaking of the several authors there would have been none 

 of this horrid noise. No one, I am sure, who knows you 

 could doubt about your hearty sympathy with every one who 

 makes any little advance in science. I still well remember my 

 surprise at the manner in which you listened to me in Hart 

 Street on my return from the Beagle's voyage. You did me 

 a. world of good. It is horridly vexatious that so frank and 

 apparently amiable a man as Falconer should have behaved 

 .so.t Well, it will all soon be forgotten 



[In reply to the above-mentioned letter of my father's 

 to the Athenceum, an article appeared in that Journal 

 (May 2nd, 1863, p. 586), accusing my father of claiming 

 for his views the exclusive merit of " connecting by an in- 

 telligible thread of reasoning" a number of facts in mor- 

 phology, &c. The writer remarks that, " The different 

 generalisations cited by Mr. Darwin as being connected by 

 an intelligible thread of reasoning exclusively through his 



* My father here quotes Lyell greatly sink scientific men. I have 



incorrectly ; see the footnote on the seen sneers already in the Times? 

 previous page. t It is to this affair that the 



f In a letter to Sir J. D. Hooker extract from a letter to Falconer, 



he wrote: "I much like Lyell's given Vol. I. p. 158, refers, 

 letter. But all this squabbling will 



