SKETCH OF 1844. 373 



your paper very well written and interesting. It puts my 

 extracts (written in 1839, now just twenty years ago !), which 

 I must say in apology were never for an instant intended for 

 publication, into the shade." The statement that the earliest 

 sketch was written in 1839 ^^s been frequently made in bio- 

 graphical notices of my father, no doubt on the authority of 

 the * Linnean Journal,' but it must, I think, be considered as 

 erroneous. The error may possibly have arisen in this way. 

 In writing on the Table of Contents of the 1844 MS. that it 

 was sketched in 1839, I think my father may have intended 

 to imply that the framework of the theory was clearly thought 

 out by him at that date. In the Autobiography (p. 71) he 

 speaks of the time, "about 1839, when the theory was clearly 

 conceived," meaning, no doubt, the end of 1838 and begin- 

 ning of 1839, when the reading of Malthus had given him the 

 key to the idea of natural selection. But this explanation 

 does not apply to the letter to Mr. Wallace ; and with regard 

 to the passage* in the 'Linnean Journal' it is difficult to 

 understand how it should have been allowed to remain as it 

 now stands, conveying, as it clearly does, the impression that 

 1839 was the date of his earliest written sketch. 



The sketch of 1844 is written in a clerk's hand, in two 

 hundred and thirty-one pages folio, blank leaves being alter- 

 nated with the MS. with a view to amplification. The text 

 has been revised and corrected, criticisms being pencilled by 

 himself on the margin. It is divided into two parts : I. " On 

 the variation of Organic Beings under Domestication and in 

 their Natural State." II. " On the Evidence favourable and 

 opposed to the view that Species are naturally formed races 

 descended from common Stocks." The first part contains 

 the main argument of the ' Origin of Species.' It is founded, 

 as is the argument of that work, on the study of domestic 

 animals, and both the Sketch and the ' Origin ' open with a 



* My father certainly saw the proofs of the paper, for he added a foot- 

 note apologising for the style of the extracts, on the ground that the " work 

 was never intended for publication." 



