1844-] VESTIGES OF CREATION. 333 



well ask St. Paul's. Whenever I give myself a trip, it shall be, 

 I think, to Scotland, to hunt for more parallel roads. My 

 marine theory for these roads was for a time knocked on the 



head by Agassiz ice-work, but it is now reviving again 



Farewell, we are getting nearly finished almost all the 

 workmen gone, and the gravel laying down on the walks. 

 Ave Maria ! how the money does go. There are twice as 

 many temptations to extravagance in the country compared 

 with London. Adios. 



Yours, 



C. DARWIN. 



C. Danvin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down, [1844?] 



.... I have also read the ' Vestiges,' * but have been some- 

 what less amused at it than you appear to have been : the 

 writing and arrangement are certainly admirable, but his 

 geology strikes me as bad, and his zoology far worse. I 

 should be very much obliged, if at any future or leisure time 

 you could tell me on what you ground your doubtful belief in 

 imagination of a mother affecting her offspring.t I have 

 attended to the several statements scattered about, but do not 



* 'The Vestiges of the Natural 1845 :" Have you read that strange, 

 History of Creation,' was published unphilosophical, but capitally-writ- 

 anonymously in 1844; it is now ten book, the 'Vestiges': it has 

 known to have been written by the made more talk than any work of 

 late Robert Chambers (see Intro- late, and has been by some attri- 

 duction to the 1 2th edition of the buted to me at which I ought to 

 ' Vestiges,' 1884). My father's copy be much flattered and unflattered.' 

 gives signs of having been carefully f This refers to the case of a 

 read, a long list of marked passages relative of Sir J. Hooker's, who in- 

 being pinned in at the end. One use- sisted that a mole, which appeared 

 ful lesson he seems to have learned on one of her children, was the 

 from it. He writes : " The idea of effect of fright upon herself on 

 a fish passing into a reptile, mon- having, before the birth of the 

 strous. I will not specify any genea- child, blotted with sepia a copy ot 

 logics much too little known at Turner's ' Liber Studiorum ' that 

 present." He refers again to the had been lent to her with special 

 book in a letter to Fox, February, injunctions to be careful. 



