DARWIN 335 



into the literature of the subject and was read- 

 ing Geoffroy St. Hilaire. He carefully read 

 and abstracted Haldeman's arguments for and 

 against the development theory. He studied the 

 botanist de Candolle upon the effects of geo- 

 graphical distribution and Brown upon varia- 

 tion. He was somewhat fearful lest he should be 

 classed with Lamarck. He wrote to Hooker 

 (January 11, 1844) : 



... I have been now ever since my return en- 

 gaged in a very presumptuous work, and I know no 

 one individual who would not say a very foolish one. 

 I was so struck with the distribution of the Gala- 

 pagos organisms, etc., and wath the character of the 

 American fossil mammifers, etc., that I determined 

 to collect blindly every sort of fact which could bear 

 in any way on what are species. ... At last, gleams 

 of light have come, and I am almost convinced (quite 

 contrary to the opinion that I started with) that 

 species are not (it is like confessing a murder) im- 

 mutable. Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense 

 of a "tendency to progression," "adaptations from 

 the slow willing of animals," etc. ! But the conclusions 

 I am led to are not widely different from his ; though 

 the means of change are wholly so. 



In another place he wrote: "Lamarck's work ap- 

 peared to me to be extremely poor; I got not a 

 fact or idea from it." 



By 1856 Darwin had sent Hooker his manu- 



