i86o.l PROGRESS OF OPINION. 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



Down, February 2$th [1860]. 



.... I cannot help wondering at your zeal about my 

 book. I declare to heaven you seem to care as much about 

 my book as I do myself. You have no right to be so 

 eminently unselfish ! I have taken off my spit [i. e. file] a 

 letter of Ramsay's, as every geologist convert I think very 

 important. By the way, I saw some time ago a letter from 

 H. D. Rogers * to Huxley, in which he goes very far with 

 us. ... 



C. Darwin to /. D. Hooker. 



Down, Saturday, March 3rd, [1860]. 



MY DEAR HOOKER, What a day's work you had on that 

 Thursday ! I was not able to go to London till Monday, and 

 then I was a fool for going, for, on Tuesday night, I had an 

 attack of fever (with a touch of pleurisy), which came on 

 like a lion, but went off as a lamb, but has shattered me a 

 good bit. 



I was much interested by your last note. ... I think you 

 expect too much in regard to change of opinion on the sub- 

 ject of Species. One large class of men, more especially I 

 suspect of naturalists, never will care about any general ques- 

 tion, of which old Gray, of the British Museum, may be taken 

 as a type ; and secondly, nearly all men past a moderate age, 

 either in actual years or in mind, are, I am fully convinced, 

 incapable of looking at facts under a new point of view. 

 Seriously, I am astonished and rejoiced at the progress which 

 the subject has made ; look at the enclosed memorandum.! 



- says my book will be forgotten in ten years, perhaps so ; 

 but, with such a list, I feel convinced the subject will not. 

 The outsiders, as you say, are strong. 



* Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. Born in the 

 United States 1809, died i860. 



f See table of names, p. 87. 



