MY NEW IDEAS 405 



here that the writer has not a sufficient grasp of the elementary- 

 laws of distribution to enable him to grapple with the subject. 

 One example of this will suffice. He says, " Plants are not, 

 as a fact, carried far by wind, Corsican, Sardinian, and Sicil- 

 ian plants not occurring in Italy." No one who understands 

 the first principles of evolution by natural selection could have 

 made such a statement. And as to his alleged " fact," I have 

 given overwhelming evidence against it in my book. 



Mr. Darwin informs me, however, that he thinks the great 

 German botanist, Engler, is favorable to my views; but what 

 is very much more important is that Sir Joseph Hooker him- 

 self accepts them, and I have his permission (February, 1905) 

 to quote the following passages referring to the whole book, 

 from a letter written in 1880, and to say that he has not 

 changed his opinion : — 



" I think you have made an immense advance to our 

 knowledge of the ways and means of distribution, and bridged 

 many great gaps. Your reasoning seems to me to be sound 

 throughout, though I am not prepared to receive it in all its 

 details." 



And again : " I very much like your whole working of the 

 problem of the isolation and connection of New Zealand and 

 Australia inter se, and with the countries north of them ; and 

 the whole treatment of that respecting north and south migra- 

 tion over the Globe is admirable." 



For those who have not my " Island Life," there is a com- 

 pact statement of the whole argument in my " Darwinism," 



PP. 36I-373- 



9. In 1 881 I put forth the first idea of mouth-gesture as a 

 factor in the origin of language, in a review of E. P. Tylor's 

 " Anthropology," and in 1895 I extended it into an article in 

 the Fortnightly Review, and reprinted it with a few further 

 corrections in my " Studies," under the title, " The Expres- 

 siveness of Speech or Mouth-Gesture as a Factor in the Origin 

 of Language." In it I have developed a completely new 

 principle in the theory of the origin of language by showing 

 that every motion of the jaws, lips, and tongue, together with 



