Ch. XIV.] 1861—1871. 275 



those which at least cannot be assailed by mere efforts of 

 imagination." 



In the fifth edition of the Origin, my fathor altered a 

 passage in the Historical Sketch (fourth edition, p. xviii.). He 

 thus practically gave up the difficult task of understanding 

 whether or not Sir K. Owen claims to have discovered the 

 principle of Natural Selection. Adding, " As far as the mere 

 enunciation of the principle of Natural Selection is concerned, 

 it is quite immaterial whether or not Professor Owen preceded 

 me, for both of us . . . were long ago preceded by Dr. Wells 

 and Mr. Matthew." 



The desire that his views might spread in France was always 

 strong with my father, and he was therefore justly annoyed to 

 find that in 18G9 the publisher of the French edition had 

 brought out a third edition without consulting the author. 

 He was accordingly glad to enter into an arrangement for a 

 French translation of the fifth edition ; this was undertaken 

 by M. Rein wald, with whom he continued to have pleasant rela- 

 tions as the publisher of many of his books in French. 



He wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker : — 



" I must enjoy myself and tell you about Mdlle. C. Royer, 

 who translated the Origin into French, and for whose second 

 edition I took infinite trouble. She has now just brought out a 

 third edition without informing me, so that all the corrections, 

 &c, in the fourth and fifth English editions are lost. Besides 

 her enormously long preface to the first edition, she has added 

 a second preface abusing me like a pickpocket for Pangenesis, 

 which of course has no relation to the Origin. So I wrote to 

 Pans ; and Reinwald agrees to bring out at once a new transla- 

 tion from the fifth English edition, in competition with her third 

 edition. . . . This fact shows that ' evolution of species ' must 

 at last be spreading in France." 



It will be well perhaps to place here all that remains to be 

 said about the Origin of Species. The sixth or final edition 

 was published in January 1872 in a smaller and cheaper form 

 than its predecessors. The chief addition was a discussion 

 suggested by Mr. Mivart's Genesis of Species, which appeared 

 in 1871, before the publication of the Descent of Man. The 

 following quotation from a letter to Wallace (July 9, 1871) 

 may serve to show the spirit and method in which Mr. Mivart 

 dealt with the subject. " I grieve to see the omission of the 

 words by Mivart, detected by Wright.* I complained to 



* The late Chauncey Wright, in an article published in the North 

 American Review, vol. cxiii. pp. 83, 84. Wright points out that the words 

 omitted are •« essential to the point on which he [Mr. Mivart] cites Mr. 



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