i v MODERN E VOL UTION 1 23 



would not fail to bring. In this, he tells us, he 

 forgot his 'daily discomfort/ and thus was delivered 

 from morbid introspection. 



Darwin worked at his rough notes on the varia- 

 tion of animals and plants under domestication, 

 adding facts collected by ' printed enquiries, by 

 conversations with skilful breeders and gardeners, 

 and by extensive reading,' gleams of light coming 

 till he says that he is ' almost convinced that species 

 are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.' 

 But he was still groping in the dark as to the appli- 

 cation of selection to wild plants and animals, until, 

 as remarked above, the chance reading of Malthus 

 suggested a working theory. A brief sketch of this 

 theory, written out in pencil in 1842, was elaborated 

 in 1844 into an essay of two hundred and thirty 

 pages. The importance attached to this was shown 

 in a letter which Darwin then addressed to his wife, 

 charging her, in the event of his death, to apply 

 400 to the expense of publication. He also named 

 certain competent men from whom an editor might 

 be chosen, preference being given to Sir Charles 

 (then Mr.) Lyell, at whose advice Darwin began to 

 write out his views on a scale three or four times as 

 extensive as that in which they appeared in the 

 Origin of Species. Their publication in an abstract 

 form was hastened by the receipt, in June 1858, of 

 a paper, containing * exactly the same theory,' from 

 Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace at Ternate in the 

 Moluccas. This reference to that distinguished ex- 

 plorer, will, before the story of the coincident dis- 

 covery is further told, fitly introduce a sketch of his 

 career. 



