258 'VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION.' [1868. 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker* 



February 3 [1868]. 



... I am very much pleased at what you say about my 

 Introduction ; after it was in type I was as near as possible 

 cancelling the whole. I have been for some time in despair 

 about my book, and if I try to read a few pages I feel fairly 

 nauseated, but do not let this make you praise it ; for I have 

 made up my mind that it is not worth a fifth part of the 

 enormous labour it has cost me. I assure you that all that is 

 worth your doing (if you have time for so much) is glancing 

 at Chapter VI., and reading parts of the later chapters. The 

 facts on self-impotent plants seem to me curious, and I have 

 worked out to my own satisfaction the good from crossing and 

 evil from interbreeding. I did read Pangenesis the other 

 evening, but even this, my beloved child, as I had fancied, 

 quite disgusted me. The devil take the whole book ; and 

 yet now I am at work again as hard as I am able. It is really 

 a great evil that from habit I have pleasure in hardly anything 

 except Natural History, for nothing else makes me forget my 

 ever-recurrent uncomfortable sensations. But I must not 

 howl any more, and the critics may say what they like ; I 

 did my best, and man can do no more. What a splendid 

 pursuit Natural History would be if it was all observing and 

 no writing ! . . . . 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down, February 10 [1868]. 



MY DEAR HOOKER, What is the good of having a friend, 

 if one may not boast to him ? I heard yesterday that Mur- 

 ray has sold in a week the whole edition of 1500 copies of my 

 book, and the sale so pressing that he has agreed with Clowes 

 to get another edition in fourteen days ! This has done me 

 a world of good, for I had got into a sort of dogged hatred 

 of my book. And now there has appeared a review in the 

 Pall Mall which has pleased me excessively, more perhaps 



