i87i.] REVIEWS. 



suppose I shall not escape. On the whole, the reviews have 

 been highly favourable." 



The following extract from a letter to Mr. Murray (April 

 13, 1871) refers to a review in the Times.\ 



" I have no idea who wrote the Times review. He has no 

 knowledge of science, and seems to me a wind-bag full of 

 metaphysics and classics, so that I do not much regard his 

 adverse judgment, though I suppose it will injure the sale." 



A review of the ' Descent of Man,' which my father spoke 

 of as " capital," appeared in the Saturday Review (Mar. 4 

 and n, 1871). A passage from the first notice (Mar. 4) may 

 be quoted in illustration of the broad basis as regards general 

 acceptance, on which the doctrine of Evolution now stood : 

 " He claims to have brought man himself, his origin and con- 

 stitution, within that unity which he had previously sought 

 to trace through all lower animal forms. The growth of 

 opinion in the interval, due in chief measure to his own in- 

 termediate works, has placed the discussion of this problem 

 in a position very much in advance of that held by it fifteen 

 years ago. The problem of Evolution is hardly any longer to 

 be treated as one of first principles ; nor has Mr. Darwin to 

 do battle for a first hearing of his central hypothesis, upborne 

 as it is by a phalanx of names full of distinction and promise, 

 in either hemisphere." 



The infolded point of the human ear, discovered by Mr. 

 Woolner, and described in the ' Descent of Man,' seems 

 especially to have struck the popular imagination ; my fathei 

 wrote to Mr. Woolner : 



and plenty of abuse, and I suppose abuse is as good as praise for selling a 

 book." (From a letter to Mr. Murray, Jan. 31, 1867.) 



f Times, April 7 and 8, 1871. The review is not only unfavourable as 

 regards the book under discussion, but also as regards Evolution in general, 

 as the following citation will show : " Even had it been rendered highly 

 probable, which we doubt, that the animal creation has been developed 

 into its numerous and widely different varieties by mere evolution, it would 

 still require an independent investigation of overwhelming force and com- 

 pleteness to justify the presumption that man is but a term in this self 

 evolving series." 



