His Great Work Published, 143 



the publication of the Wallace article without a 

 statement from Darwin, who, they well knew, had 

 been working on the same subject for years. Darwin 

 was at first not willing to take any action in the 

 matter to protect himself, fearing that he would do 

 an injustice to Wallace ; but the difficulty was 

 finally arranged through the mediation of friends, so 

 that the rights of both naturalists, who had almost 

 simultaneously conceived the same idea, were pro- 

 tected, and not for a moment were the relations 

 between them strained. Both were preeminently 

 great, and possessed of natures above the suspicion 

 of jealousy. The result was that the paper of Wal- 

 lace, accompanied by a letter from Professor Asa 

 Gray, and an abstract of Darwin's work, was pub- 

 lished in the transactions of the Linnaean Society, 

 July, 1858, being, in reality, the first gun in what 

 became one of the greatest discursive scientific war- 

 fares of the age. 



This publication did not arouse any especial com- 

 ment, as one might have supposed what was really 

 the birth of modern evolutionism would have done, 

 yet the interest came later on. Sir Charles Lyell 

 and Sir Joseph Hooker now urged Darwin to pro- 

 duce his work, and, after thirteen months and ten 

 days of hard labour, he brought out the now famous 

 work, " The Origin of Species," .which immortalised 

 him. Darwin considered this the chief object of his 

 life, and it was a constant delight that the book 

 always had a good sale, though by no means a work 

 for popular reading. 



The publishers, supposing that so " stiff " a book 



