DARWIN AND MULTIPLE ORIGINS 249 



parents specifically distinct ' l ; secondly, in chap- 

 ters XI and XII, the vast array of facts which 

 are consistent with the belief in ' single centres of 

 creation ', and serve to explain the great apparent 

 difficulties. 



Sir Charles Lyell had also arrived at the firm 

 conviction that species had spread from single 

 centres, and, within a few days of Darwin's 

 expression of the same conviction in July, 1856, 

 he also was writing to Hooker and telling of 

 his unnecessary fears : 



1856, July 25. ' I fear much that if Darwin argues that 

 species are phantoms, he will also have to admit that single 

 centres of dispersion are phantoms also, and that would 

 deprive me of much of the value which I ascribe to the 

 present provinces of animals and plants, as illustrating 

 modern and tertiary changes in physical geography.' 2 



It is clear that Darwin heard of LyelTs ap- 

 prehensions and was referring to them in the 

 two following passages in letters to Hooker : 



1856, July 80. ' I cannot conceive why Lyell thinks 

 such notions as mine or of ' Vestiges ' will invalidate 

 specific centres.' * 



1856, Aug. 5. ' I suppose, in regard to specific centres, 

 we are at cross purposes ; I should call the kitchen garden 

 in which the red cabbage was produced, or the farm in which 

 Bakewell made the Shorthorn cattle, the specific centre of 

 these species \ And surely this is centralisation enough ! ' * 



When, however, the Origin had appeared, and 

 Lyell was for a time resisting its appeal, he 



1 Origin of Species (1859), 352. 



1 Lift and Letters, li. 83. Quoted from Life of Sir Charles Lyell, 

 ii. 216. * Ibid., 81. Ibid., 82. 



