78 CHARLES DARWIN 



essays preceded Darwin's work by some twelve months. 

 Baden-Powell's essay on the ' Philosophy of Creation ' 

 (much debated and condemned in ecclesiastical circles), 

 and Professor Owen's somewhat contradictory utterances 

 on the nature of types and archetypal ideas, also helped 

 to keep alive interest in the problem of origins np to 

 the very moment of the final appearance of Darwin's 

 great and splendid solution. 



It is interesting during these intermediate years to 

 watch from time to time the occasional side-hints of 

 Darwin's activity and of the interest it aroused among 

 his scientific contemporaries. In 1854, foe, example, 

 Sir Charles Lyell notes, after an evening at Darwin's, 

 how Sir Joseph Hooker astonished him with an account 

 of that strange orchid, Catasetum, which bears three 

 totally distinct kinds of flowers on the same plant ; ' Ib 

 will figure,' he says, { in C. Darwin's book on species, 

 with many other " ugly facts," as Hooker, clinging like 

 me to the orthodox faith, calls these and other abnormal 

 vagaries.' On a similar occasion, a little later, Lyell 

 asks, after meeting ' Huxley, Hooker, and "Wollaston at 

 Darwin's,' 'After all, did we not come from an ourang?' 

 Last of all, in 1857, Darwin himself writes an anti- 

 cipatory letter to his American friend, Asa Gray, in 

 which he mentions ' six points ' the cardinal concep- 

 tions of the ' Origin of Species.' His book is now 

 fairly under weigh ; he speaks of it himself to acquaint- 

 ance and correspondents as an acknowledged project. 



Events were growing ripe for the birth. A lucky 

 accident precipitated its parturition in the course of the 

 year 1858. 



