28 SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [1864. 



Natural Selection is making some progress in this country, and 

 that pleases me. The subject, however, is safe in foreign lands." 



To Sir J. D. Hooker, also, he wrote : 



" How kind you have been about this medal ; indeed, I am 

 blessed with many good friends, and I have received four or 

 five notes which have warmed my heart. I often wonder that 

 so old a worn-out dog as I am is not quite forgotten. Talking 

 of medals, has Falconer had the Royal ? he surely ought to 

 have it, as ought John Lubbock. By the way, the latter tells 

 me that some old members of the Royal are quite shocked at 

 my having the Copley. Do you know who ? " 



He wrote to Mr. Huxley : 



" I must and will answer you, for it is a real pleasure for me 

 to thank you cordially for your note. Such notes as this of 

 yours, and a few others, are the real medal to me, and not the 

 round bit of gold. These have given me a pleasure which 

 will long endure ; so believe in my cordial thanks for your note." 



Sir Charles Lyell, writing to my father in November 1864 

 ( ( Life,' vol. ii. p. 384), speaks of the supposed malcontents as 

 being afraid to crown anything so unorthodox as the ' Origin.' 

 But he adds that if such were their feelings " they had the 

 good sense to draw in their horns." It appears, hoVever, from 

 the same letter, that the proposal to give the Copley Medal 

 to my father in the previous year failed owing to a similar 

 want of courage to Lyell's great indignation. 



In the Reader, December 3, 1864, General Sabine's presi- 

 dential address at the Anniversary Meeting is reported at 

 some length. Special weight was laid on my father's work in 

 Geology, Zoology, and Botany, but the * Origin of Species ' is 

 praised chiefly as containing " a mass of observations," &c. 

 It is curious that as in the case of his election to the French 

 Institute, so in this case, he was honoured not for the great 

 work of his life, but for his less important work in special 

 lines. The paragraph in General Sabine's address which 

 refers to the ' Origin of Species,' is as follows : 



