I859-] RESTING AT ILKLEY. 529 



" not clear," or " ?." Such marks would cost you little trouble, 

 and I could copy them and reflect on them, and their value 

 would be infinite to me. 



My larger book will have to be wholly re- written, and not 

 merely the present volume expanded ; so that I want to waste 

 as little time over this volume as possible, if another edition 

 be called for ; but I fear the subject will be too perplexing, 

 as I have treated it, for general public. 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Ilkley, Yorkshire, 



Sunday [Oct. 23rd, 1859]. 



MY DEAR HOOKER, I congratulate you on your ' Intro- 

 duction ' * being in fact finished. I am sure from what I read 

 of it (and deeply I shall be interested in reading it straight 

 through), that it must have cost you a prodigious amount of 

 labour and thought. I shall like very much to see the sheet, 

 which you wish me to look at. Now I am so completely a 

 gentleman, that I have sometimes a little difficulty to pass the 

 day ; but it is astonishing how idle a three weeks I have 

 passed. If it is any comfort to you, pray delude yourself by 

 saying that you intend " sticking to humdrum science." But 

 I believe it just as much as if a plant were to say that, " I 

 have been growing all my life, and, by Jove, I will stop grow- 

 ing." You cannot help yourself; you are not clever enough 

 for that. You could not even remain idle, as I have done, 

 for three weeks ! What you say about Lyell pleases me ex- 

 ceedingly ; I had not at all inferred from his letters that he 

 had come so much round. I remember thinking, above a 

 year ago, that if ever I lived to see Lyell, yourself, and Hux- 

 ley come round, partly by my book, and partly by their own 

 reflections, I should feel that the subject is safe, and all the 

 world might rail, but that ultimately the theory of Natural 

 Selection (though, no doubt, imperfect in its present condi- 



* Australian Flora. 



