308 DR. MEIKLEJOHN. CHAP, xvin 



and acquire new facts and materials for the formation of 

 further knowledge. Theories might wait. Certainly the 

 time had not yet arisen for harmonising the Testimony of 

 tlie Rocks with the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. 



Dr. Meiklejohn again resumed his correspondence 

 with his friend Dick on his return to England, while 

 surgeon of H.M.S. "Asia." Dick replied to him at 

 once. He began his letter to the doctor with a little 

 bit of censure : " If I were to plead busy, as you do, as 

 an excuse for not writing, I think I would never scribble 

 a word at all. I rise generally at three o'clock, and am 

 for the most part engaged all the day until I go to roost 

 at nine o'clock in the evening. Nothing but thirty 

 years' practice could have enabled me to endure such a 

 galley-slave life. 



" I have not seen Sir Charles Lyell's book on the 

 Geological Age of Man, and should I see a review of it I 

 must be on my guard, for I fear I am too straightfor- 

 ward in expressing my notions on these and other 

 fashionable speculative dreams. I have seen Darwin's 

 book on Orchids very coolly reviewed in the Athenceum. 

 I have no wish to meddle with Mr. Darwin's peculiar 

 notions. . . . One thing, indeed, I'll grant Mr. Darwin 

 that hundreds of so-called species may have sprung 

 from one stock. I have been lately looking at grasses, 

 and would not care though Mr. Darwin made all the 

 species of Poa and Festuca to have grown from one 

 plant. And so of many more of them." 



In a future letter Dick says : " I am sorry you think 

 that I do an injustice to Mr. Darwin, as I would not 



