138 THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1860. 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



15 Marine Parade, Eastbourne, 



Friday evening [September 28th, 1860]. 



.... I am very glad to hear about the Germans reading 

 my book. No one will be converted who has not independ- 

 ently begun to doubt about species. Is not Krohn * a good 

 fellow ? I have long meant to write to him. He has been 

 working at Cirripedes, and has detected two or three 

 gigantic blunders, .... about which, I thank Heaven, I 

 spoke rather doubtfully. Such difficult dissection that even 

 Huxley failed. It is chiefly the interpretation which I put on 

 parts that is so wrong, and not the parts which I describe. 

 But they were gigantic blunders, and why I say all this is be- 

 cause Krohn, instead of crowing at all, pointed out my errors 

 with the utmost gentleness and pleasantness. I have always 

 meant to write to him and thank him. I suppose Dr. Krohn, 

 Bonn, would reach him. 



I cannot see yet how the multiple origin of dog can be 

 properly brought as argument for the multiple origin of man. 

 Is not your feeling a remnant of the deeply impressed one on 

 all our minds, that a species is an entity, something quite dis- 

 tinct from a variety ? Is it not that the dog case injures the 

 argument from fertility, so that one main argument that the 

 races of man are varieties and not species i.e., because they 

 are fertile inter se, is much weakened ? 



I quite agree with what Hooker says, that whatever varia- 

 tion is possible under culture, is possible under nature ; not that 

 the same form would ever be accumulated and arrived at by 

 selection for man's pleasure, and by natural selection for the 

 organism's own good. 



Talking of u natural selection ; " if I had to commence de 



* There are two papers by Aug. Krohn, one on the Cement Glands, 

 and the other on the development of Cirripedes, ' Wiegmann's Archiv,' 

 xxv. and xxvi. My father has remarked that he "blundered dreadfully 

 about the cement glands," 'Autobiography,' p. 66. 



