42 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Ch. H. 



now (1876) been sold in England ; and considering how stiff a 

 book it is, this is a large sale. It has been translated into almost 

 every European tongue, even into such languages as Spanish, 

 Bohemian, Polish, and Russian. It has also, according to 

 Miss Bird, been translated into Japanese,* and is there much 

 studied. Even an essay in Hebrew has appeared on it, show- 

 ing that the theory is contained in the Old Testament ! The 

 reviews were very numerous; for some time I collected all 

 that appeared on the Origin and on my related books, and 

 these amount (excluding newspaper reviews) to 265 ; but after 

 a time I gave up the attempt in despair. Many separate 

 essays and books on the subject have appeared; and in 

 Germany a catalogue or bibliography on " Darwinismus " has 

 appeared every year or two. 



The success of the Origin may, I think, be attributed in 

 large part to my having long before written two condensed 

 sketches, and to my having finally abstracted a much larger 

 manuscript, which was itself an abstract. By this means I was 

 enabled to select the more striking facts and conclusions. I 

 had, also, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, 

 that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought 

 came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to 

 make a memorandum of it without fail and at onco ; for I had 

 found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far 

 more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones. 

 Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against 

 my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to 

 answer. 



It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin 

 proved " that the subject was in the air," or " that men's minds 

 were prepared for it." I do not think that this is strictly true, 

 for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never 

 happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about 

 the permanence of species. Even Lyell and Hooker, though 

 they would listen with interest to me, never seemed to agree. I 

 tried once or twice to explain to able men what I meant by 

 Natural selection, but signally failed. What I believe was 

 strictly true is that innumerable well-observed facts were 

 stored in the minds of naturalists ready to take their proper 

 places as soon as any theory which would receive them was 

 sufficiently explained. Another element in the success of the 

 book was its moderate size ; and this I owe to the appearance 

 of Mr. Wallace's essay ; had I published on the scale in which 



* Miss Bird is mistaken, as I learn from Professor Mitsukuri.— F. D. 



