1844-] VESTIGES OF CREATION. 333 



well ask St. Paul's. Whenever I give myself a trip, it shall be, 

 I think, to Scotland, to hunt for more parallel roads. My 

 marine theory for these roads was for a time knocked on the 



head by Agassiz ice-work, but it is now reviving again 



Farewell, we are getting nearly finished almost all the 

 workmen gone, and the gravel laying down on the walks. 

 Ave Maria ! how the money does go. There are twice as 

 many temptations to extravagance in the country compared 



with London. Adios. 



Yours, 



C. DARWIN. 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down, [1844?] 



.... I have also read the ' Vestiges,' * but have been some- 

 what less amused at it than you appear to have been : the 

 writing and arrangement are certainly admirable, but his 

 geology strikes me as bad, and his zoology far worse. I 

 should be very much obliged, if at any future or leisure time 

 you could tell me on what you ground your doubtful belief in 

 imagination of a mother affecting her offspring.! I have 

 attended to the several statements scattered about, but do not 



* 'The Vestiges of the Natural but capitally - written book, the 



History of Creation,' was published ' Vestiges ' : it has made more talk 



anonymously in 1844, and is conn- than any work of late, and has been 



dently believed to have been written by some attributed to me at which 



by the late Robert Chambers. My I ought to be much flattered and 



father's copy gives signs of having unflattered." 



been carefully read, a long list of f This refers to the case of a 

 marked passages being pinned in at relative of Sir J. Hooker's, who wi- 

 the end. One useful lesson he seems sisted that a mole, which appeared 

 to have learned from it. He writes: on one of her children, was the 

 " The idea of a fish passing into a effect of fright upon herself on 

 reptile, monstrous. I will not having, before the birth of the 

 'specify any genealogies much too child, blotted with sepia a copy of 

 little known at present." He refers Turner's 'Liber Studiorum' that 

 again to the book in a letter to had been lent to her with special 

 Fox, February, 1845 : " Have you injunctions to be careful, 

 read that strange, unphilosophical, 



