Ch. XL] 1858—1859. 187 



abstract of your views till you received my communication. 

 Is it fair to take advantage of my having freely, though un- 

 asked, communicated to you my ideas, and thus prevent me 

 forestalling you ? " The advantage which I should take being 

 that I am induced to publish from privately knowing that 

 Wallace is in the field. It seems hard on me that I should be 

 , thus compelled to lose my priority of many years' standing, 

 ' but I cannot feel at all sure that this alters the justice of the 

 case. First impressions are generally right, and I at first 

 thought it would be dishonourable in me now to publish. 



Yours most truly. 



P.S. — I have always thought you would make a first-rate 

 Lord Chancellor ; and I now appeal to you as a Lord 

 Chancellor. 



C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Tuesday night [June 29, 1858]. 



My dear Hooker — I have just read your letter, and see 

 you want the papers at once. I am quite prostrated,* and 

 can do nothing, but I send Wallace, and the abstract f of my 

 letter to Asa Gray, which gives most imperfectly only the 

 means of change, and does not touch on reasons for believing 

 that species do change. I dare say all is too late. I hardly 

 care about it. But you are too generous to sacrifice so much 

 time and kindness. It is most generous, most kind. I send 

 my sketch of 1844= solely that you may see by your own 

 handwriting that you did read it. I really cannot bear to 

 look at it. Do not waste much time. It is miserable in me 

 to care at all about priority. 



The table of contents will show what it is. 



I would make a similar, but shorter and more accurate 

 sketch for the Linnean Journal. 



I will do anything. God bless you, my dear kind friend. 



I can write no more. I send this by my servant to Kew. 



The joint paper J of Mr. Wallace and my father was read 

 at the Linnean Society on the evening of July 1st. Mr. 



* After the death, from scarlet fever, of his infant child. 



f " Abstract " is here used in the sense of " extract ; " in this sense 

 also it occurs in the Linnean Journal, where the sources of my father's 

 paper are described. 



X " On the tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetua- 

 tion of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection." — Linnean 

 Society's Journal, iii. p. 53. 



