I868.J HAECKEL'S BOOKS. 385 



satisfaction I hear that you are a believer in the gradual evo- 

 lution of species. I had supposed that my book on the 

 ' Origin of Species ' had made very little impression in 

 France, and therefore it delights me to hear a different state- 

 ment from you. All the great authorities of the Institute 

 seem firmly resolved to believe in the immutability of spe- 

 cies, and this has always astonished me. . . . Almost the one 

 exception, as far as I know, is M. Gaudry, and I think he 

 will be soon one of the chief leaders in Zoological Palaeon- 

 tology in Europe ; and now I am delighted to hear that in 

 the sister department of Botany you take nearly the same 

 view."] 



C. Darwin to E. Haeckel. 



Down, Nov. 19 [1868]. 



MY DEAR HAECKEL, I must write to you again, for two 

 reasons. Firstly, to thank you for your letter about your 

 baby, which has quite charmed both me and my wife; I 

 heartily congratulate you on its birth. I remember being 

 surprised in my own case how soon the paternal instincts 

 became developed, and in you they seem to be unusually 

 strong, ... I hope the large blue eyes and the principles of 

 inheritance will make your child as good a naturalist as you 

 are ; but, judging from my own experience, you will be aston- 

 ished to find how the whole mental disposition of your chil- 

 dren changes with advancing years. A young child, and the 

 same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as 

 do a caterpillar and butterfly. 



The second point is to congratulate you on the projected 

 translation of your great work,* about which I heard from 

 Huxley last Sunday. I am heartily glad of it, but how it has 

 been brought about, I know not, for a friend who supported 

 the supposed translation at Norwich, told me he thought 

 there would be no chance of it. Huxley tells me that you 



* ' Generelle Morphologic,' 1866. No English translation of this book 

 has appeared. 



