248 THE SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [Ch. XIV. 



in answering you, and thanking you heartily for your offer of 

 the valuable specimen ; but I have no aquarium and shall soon 

 start for Torquay, so that it would be a thousand pities that I 

 should have it. Yet I should certainly much like to see it, 

 but I fear it is impossible. Would not the Zoological Society 

 be the best place? and then the interest which many would 

 take in this extraordinary animal would repay you for your 

 trouble. 



Kind as you have been in taking this trouble and offering me 

 this specimen, to tell the truth I value your note more than the 

 specimen. I shall keep your note amongst a very few precious 

 letters. Your kindness has quite touched me. 



Yours affectionately and gratefully. 



My father, who had the strongest belief in the value of Asa 

 Gray's help, was anxious that his evolutionary writings should 

 be more widely known in England. In the autumn of 1860, 

 and the early part of 1861, he had a good deal of correspondence 

 with him as to the publication, in the form of a pamphlet, of 

 Gray's three articles in the July, August, and October numbers 

 of the Atlantic Monthly, 1860. 



The reader will find these articles republished in Dr. Gray's 

 Darwiniana, p. 87, under the title "Natural Selection not 

 inconsistent with Natural Theology." The pamphlet found 

 many admirers, and my father believed that it was of much 

 value in lessening opposition, and making converts to Evolution. 

 His high opinion of it is shown not only in his letters, but by 

 the fact that he inserted a special notice of it in a prominent 

 place in the third edition of the Origin. Lyell, among others, 

 recognised its value as an antidote to the kind of criticism from 

 which the cause of Evolution suffered. Thus my father wrote 

 to Dr. Gray : " Just to exemplify the use of your pamphlet, the 

 Bishop of London was asking Lyell what he thought of the 

 review in the Quarterly, and Lyell answered, ' Read Asa Gray 

 in the Atlantic.' " 



On the same subject he wrote to Gray in the following 

 year : — 



**I believe that your pamphlet has done my book great 

 good; and I thank you from my heart for myself: and 

 believing that the views are in large part true, I must think 

 that you have done natural science a good turn. Natural 

 Selection seems to be making a little progress in England and 

 on the Continent ; a new German edition is called for, and a 

 French one has just appeared." 



The following may serve as an example of the form assumed 



