Oh. XIIL] REVIEWS AND CRITICISMS, 1860. 227 



nature of your review, I assure you I should feel it a great 

 honour to have my book thus preceded 



0. D. to O. Lyell. Down [February 15th, I860]. 



... I am perfectly convinced (having read it this morning) 

 that the review in the Annals * is by Wollaston ; no one else 

 in the world would have used so many parentheses. I have 

 written to him, and told him that the "pestilent" fellow- 

 thanks him for his kind manner of speaking about him. I 

 have also told him that he would be pleased to hear that the 

 Bishop of Oxford says it is the most unphilosophical f work 

 he ever read. The review seems to me clever, and only mis- 

 interprets me in a few places. Like all hostile men, he passes 

 over the explanation given of Classification, Morphology, 

 Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs, &c. I read Wallace's 

 paper in MS.,} and thought it admirably good ; he does not 

 know that he has been anticipated about the depth of inter- 

 vening sea determining distribution. . . . The most curious 

 point in the paper seems to me that about the African character 

 of the Celebes productions, but I should require further confir- 

 mation. . . . 



Henslow is staying here ; I have had some talk with him ; 

 he is in much the same state as Bunbury,§ and will go a very 

 little way with us, but brings up no real argument against going 

 further. He also shudders at the eye ! It is really curious 

 (and perhaps is an argument in our favour) how differently 

 different opposers view the subject. Henslow used to rest his 

 opposition on the imperfection of the Geological Record, but 

 he now thinks nothing of this, and says I have got well out of 



* Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist, third series, vol. v. p. 132. My father 

 has obviously taken the expression "pestilent" from the following 

 passage (p. 138) : "But who is this Nature, we have a right to ask, who 

 has such tremendous power, and to whose efficiency such marvellous 

 performances are ascribed ? What are her image and attributes, when 

 dragged from her wordy lurking-place? Is she ought but a pestilent 

 abstraction, like dust cast in our eyes to obscure the workings of an 

 Intelligent First Cause of all?" The reviewer pays a tribute to my 

 father's candour " so manly and outspoken as almost to ■ cover a multitude 

 of sins.' " The parentheses (to which allusion is made above) are so 

 frequent as to give a characteristic appearance to Mr. TVollaston's pages. 



t Another version of the words is given by Lyell, to whom they were 

 spoken, viz. " the most illogical book ever written." — Life and Letters of 

 Sir C. Lyell, vol. ii. p. 358. 



X " On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago." — Linn. 

 Soc. Journ. 1860. 



§ The late Sir Charles Bunbury, well known as a Palseo-botanist. 



Q 2 



