4i 8 MISCELLANEA. [1880 



worthy of its contents, and I can say nothing stronger than 



this. 



With cordial thanks, believe me, 



Yours very sincerely, 



CHARLES DARWIN. 



[In November, 1880, he received an account of a flood in 

 Brazil, from which his friend Fritz Mliller had barely escaped 

 with his life. My father immediately wrote to Hermann 

 Miiller anxiously enquiring whether his brother had lost books, 

 instruments, &c., by this accident, and begging in that case 

 " for the sake of science, so that science should not suffer," to 

 be allowed to help in making good the loss. Fortunately, 

 however, the injury to Fritz Mtiller's possessions was not so 

 great as was expected, and the incident remains only as a 

 memento, which I trust cannot be otherwise than pleasing to 

 the survivor, of the friendship of the two naturalists. 



In ' Nature ' (November n, 1880) appeared a letter from 

 my father, which is, I believe, the only instance in which he 

 wrote publicly with anything like severity. The late Sir 

 Wyville Thomson wrote, in the Introduction to the ' Voyage 

 of the Challenger ' .- " The character of the abyssal fauna re- 

 fuses to give the least support to the theory which refers the 

 evolution of species to extreme variation guided only by 

 natural selection." My father, after characterising these re- 

 marks as a " standard of criticism, not uncommonly reached 

 by theologians and metaphysicians," goes on to take excep- 

 tion to the term " extreme variation," and challenges Sir 

 .Wyville to name any one who has " said that the evolution 

 of species depends only on natural selection." The letter 

 closes with an imaginary scene between Sir Wyville and a 

 breeder, in which Sir Wyville criticises artificial selection in 

 a somewhat similar manner. The breeder is silent, but on 

 the departure of his critic he is supposed to make use of 

 " emphatic but irreverent language about naturalists." The 

 letter, as originally written, ended with a quotation from 

 Sedgwick on the invulnerability of those who write on what 



