WALLACE'S WORDS ON JULY 1, 1908 15 



his theory, after 10 years' 15 years' or even 18 years' 

 elaboration of it I should have had no part in it what- 

 ever, and he would have been at once recognised, and 

 should be ever recognised, as the sole and undisputed dis- 

 coverer and patient investigator of the great law of " Natural 

 Selection " in all its far-reaching consequences. 



'It was really a singular piece of good luck that gave 

 me any share whatever in the discovery ... it was only 

 Darwin's extreme desire to perfect his work that allowed me 

 to come in, as a very bad second, in the truly Olympian race in 

 which all philosophical biologists, from Buffon and Erasmus 

 Darwin to Richard Owen and Robert Chambers, were more 

 or less actively engaged.' l 



ECHOES OF THE STORM 



It is impossible to do more than refer briefly 

 to the storm of opposition with which the Origin 

 was at first received. The reviewer in the 

 Athenaeum for Nov. 19, 1859, left the author 

 ' to the mercies of the Divinity Hall, the Col- 

 lege, the Lecture Room, and the Museum '. 2 

 Dr. Whewell for some years refused to allow 

 a copy of the Origin to be placed in the library 

 of Trinity College, Cambridge. 3 My predecessor, 

 Professor J. O. Westwood, proposed to the last 

 Oxford University Commission the permanent 

 endowment of a lecturer to combat the errors 

 of Darwinism. ' Lyell had difficulty in prevent- 

 ing [Sir William] Dawson reviewing the Origin 

 on hearsay, without having looked at it. No 

 spirit of fairness can be expected from so biassed 



1 Darwin-Wallace Celebration of the Linnean Society of London 

 (1908), 6, 7. 



8 Life and Letters, ii. 228 n. ' Ibid., 261 n. 



