i868.] MR. BENTHAM. 2 6/ 



You give a good slap at my concluding metaphor : * un- 

 doubtedly I ought to have brought in and contrasted natural 

 and artificial selection ; but it seemed so obvious to me that 

 natural selection depended on contingencies even more com- 

 plex than those which must have determined the shape of 

 each fragment at the base of my precipice. What I wanted 

 to show was that in reference to pre-ordainment whatever 

 holds good in the formation of a pouter pigeon holds good in 

 the formation of a natural species of pigeon. 1 cannot see 

 that this is false. If the right variations occurred, and no 

 others, natural selection would be superfluous. A reviewer in 

 an Edinburgh paper, who treats me with profound contempt, 

 says on this subject that Professor Asa Gray could with the 

 greatest ease smash me into little pieces. f 

 Believe me, my dear Gray, 



Your ungrateful but sincere friend, 

 CHARLES DARWIN. 



C. Darwin to G. Bentham. 



Down, June 23, 1868. 



MY DEAR MR. BENTHAM, As your address J is somewhat 

 of the nature of a verdict from a judge, I do not know whether 



* A short abstract of the precipice metaphor is given at p. 307, vol. i. 

 Dr. Gray's criticism on this point is as follows : " But in Mr. Darwin's 

 parallel, to meet the case of nature according to his own view of it, not 

 only the fragments of rock (answering to variation) should fall, but the edi- 

 fice (answering to natural selection) should rise, irrespective of will or 

 choice ! " But my father's parallel demands that natural selection shall be 

 the architect, not the edifice the question of design only comes in with 

 regard to the form of the building materials. 



f The Daily Review, April 27, 1868. My father has given rather a 

 highly coloured version of the reviewer's remarks : " We doubt not that 

 Professor Asa Gray . . . could show that natural selection ... is simply 

 an instrument in the hands of an omnipotent and omniscient creator." 

 The reviewer goes on to say that the passage in question is a " very melan- 

 choly one," and that the theory is the "apotheosis of materialism." 



\ Presidential Address to the Linnean Society. 



