224 ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [Oh. XIII. 



With respect to the races, one of my best chances of truth has 

 broken down from the impossibility of getting facts. I have 

 one good speculative line, but a man must have entire credence 

 in Natural Selection before he will even listen to it. Psycho- 

 logically, I have done scarcely anything. Unless, indeed, ex- 

 pression of countenance can be included, and on that subject 

 I have collected a good many facts, and speculated, but I do 

 not suppose I shall ever publish, but it is an uncommonly 

 curious subject. 



A few days later he wrote again to the same correspondent : 

 " What a grand immense benefit you conferred on me by 

 getting Murray to publish my book. I never till to-day 

 realised that it was getting widely distributed ; for in a letter 

 from a lady to-day to E., she says she heard a man enquiring 

 for it at the Bailway Station ! 1 1 at Waterloo Bridge ; and the 

 bookseller said that he had none till the new edition was out. 

 The bookseller said he had not read it, but had heard it was a 

 very remarkable book ! ! ! " 



C. B. to J. D. Booker. Down, 14th [January, I860], 



I heard from Lyell this morning, and he tells 



me a piece of news. You are a good-for-nothing man ; here 

 you are slaving yourself to death with hardly a minute to 

 spare, and you must write a review on my book ! I thought 

 it * a very good one, and was so much struck with it, that I 

 sent it to Lyell. But I assumed, as a matter of course, that it 

 was Lindley's. Now that I know it is yours, I have re-read it, 

 and my kind and good friend, it has warmed my heart with all 

 tLe honourable and noble things you say of me and it. I was 

 a good deal surprised at Lindley hitting on some of the 

 remarks, but I never dreamed of you. I admired it chiefly 

 as so well adapted to tell on the readers of the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle ; but now I admire it in another spirit. Farewell, 

 with hearty thanks 



Asa Gray to J. D. Booker. Cambridge, Mass., 

 January 5th, 1860. 



My dear Hooker, — Your last letter, which reached me just 

 before Christmas, has got mislaid during the upturnings in my 



* Gardeners' Chronicle, 1860. Sir J. D. Hooker took the line of 

 complete impartiality, so as not to commit the editor, Lindley. 



