226 ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [Oh. Xffl. 



receive the approval of a man whom one has long sincerely 

 respected, and whose judgment and knowledge are most 

 universally admitted, is the highest reward an author can 

 possibly wish for; and I thank you heartily for your most 

 kind expressions. 



I have been absent from home for a few days, and so could 

 not earlier answer your letter to me of the 10th of January. 

 You have been extremely kind to take so much trouble and 

 interest about the edition. It has been a mistake of my 

 publisher not thinking of sending over the sheets. I had 

 entirely and utterly forgotten your offer of receiving the 

 sheets as printed off. But I must not blame my publisher, for 

 had I remembered your most kind offer I feel pretty sure I 

 should not have taken advantage of it ; for I never dreamed of 

 my book being so successful with general readers : I believe I 

 should have laughed at the idea of sending the sheets to 

 America.* 



After much consideration, and on the strong advice of Lyell 

 and others, I have resolved to leave the present book as it is 

 (excepting correcting errors, or here and there inserting short 

 sentences), and to use all my strength, which is but little, to 

 bring out the first part (forming a separate volume, with 

 index, &c.) of the three volumes which will make my bigger 

 work ; so that I am very unwilling to take up time in making 

 corrections for an American edition. I enclose a list of a few 

 corrections in the second reprint, which you will have received 

 by this time complete, and I could send four or five corrections 

 or additions of equally small importance, or rather of equal 

 brevity. I also intend to write a short preface with a brief 

 history of the subject. These I will set about, as they must 

 some day be done, and I will send them to you in a short time 

 — the few corrections first, and the preface afterwards, unless 

 I hear that you have given up all idea of a separate edition. 

 You will then be able to judge whether it is worth having 

 the new edition with your review prefixed. Whatever be the 



conclusions, than I should if I announced myself a convert ; nor could I 

 say the latter, with truth. . . . 



" What seems to me the weakest point in the book is the attempt 

 to account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, &c, by natural 

 selection. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian." 



* In a letter to Mr. Murray, 1860, my father wrote : — " I am amused 

 by Asa Gray's account of the excitement my book has made amongst 

 naturalists in the U. States. Agassiz has denounced it in a newspaper, 

 but yet in such terms that it is in fact a fine advertisement!" This 

 seems to refer to a lecture given before the Mercantile Library Association' 



