i862.] FALCONER ON SPECIES. !g r 



I am surprised, but do not pretend to form an opinion at 

 Hooker's statement that higher species, genera, &c., are best 

 limited. It seems to me a bold statement. 



Looking to the ' Origin/ I see that I state that the pro- 

 ductions of the land seem to change quicker than those of 

 the sea (Chapter X., p. 339, 3d edition), and I add there is 

 some reason to believe that organisms considered high in the 

 scale change quicker than those that are low. I remember 



writing these sentences after much deliberation I 



remember well feeling much hesitation about putting in even 

 the guarded sentences which I did. My doubts, I remember, 

 related to the rate of change of the Radiata in the Secondary 

 formation, and of the Foraminifera in the oldest Tertiary 



beds Good night, 



C. DARWIN. 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



Down, Oct. i [1862]. 



.... I found here * a short and very kind note of Fal- 

 coner, with some pages of his ' Elephant Memoir/ which will 

 be published, in which he treats admirably on long persistence 

 of type. I thought he was going to make a good and crush- 

 ing attack on me, but to my great satisfaction, he ends by 

 pointing out a loophole, and adds, f " with him I have no faith 

 that the mammoth and other extinct elephants made their 



appearance suddenly The most rational view seems 



to be that they are the modified descendants of earlier pro- 

 genitors, &c." This is capital. There will not be soon one 

 good palaeontologist who believes in immutability. Falconer 

 does not allow for the Proboscidean group being a failing one, 

 and therefore not likely to be giving off new races. 



* On his return from Bournemouth. 



f Falconer, " On the American Fossil Elephant," in the ' Nat. Hist. 

 Review,' 1863, p. 81. The words preceding those cited by my father 

 make the meaning of his quotation clearer. The passage begins as follows : 

 " The inferences which I draw from these facts are not opposed to one pf 

 the leading propositions of Darwin's theory. With him," &c. &c. 



