798 ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. 



the reconstruction of the species to which they belonged, I was, at 

 length, led to recognise one cause of extinction as being due to defeat 

 in the ( contest which as a living organised whole, the individual of 

 each species had to maintain against the surrounding agencies which 

 might militate against its existence.' (Pref. p. xxxiv.) This 

 principle has received a large and most instructive accession of 

 illustrations from the extensive knowledge and devoted labours 

 of Charles Darwin : but he aims to apply it not only to the ex- 

 tinction but the origin of species. 



Although I fail to recognise proof of the latter bearing of the 

 ' battle of life,' the concurrence of so much evidence in favour of 

 6 extinction by law ' is, in like measure, corroborative of the truth 

 of the ascription of the origin of species to a secondary cause. 1 



1 A critic of the first volume of the present work, switching over the pages of the 

 ' Preface ' with the speed they merited at his hands, caught sight of the words, 

 'contest of existence,' 'battle of life;' and thereupon dashed off with — 'We would 

 call attention to the following passage, and ask whether it is not actually an ad- 

 mission of the Darwinian Theory!' ('London Review,' April 28, 1866, p. 483); then 

 pastes in the slip, beginning with ' the actual presence,' to ' fared better in the battle 

 of life.' With the bulk of the two volumes before him, an able reviewer eould 

 hardly be expected to waste valuable time upon 'notes,' and so the fact escaped 

 him that the ' admission ' or ' adoption ' was, in whatever degree it might relate to 

 the D. T., an anticipation. 



Oddly enough, another reviewer (if haply the same meritorious labourer may not 

 have been doing this sort of work for both periodicals) makes the same transposition 

 of dates, mistaking a quotation for text ; e.g. ' Not the least important feature in the 

 work before us is, that it contains a partial concurrence, on the part of the author, in 

 the theory of Natural Selection.' And the same cutting does duty as ' piece justifica- 

 tive,' viz., ' The actual presence,' &c. to ' battle of life.' — (' Popular Science Review,' 

 April, 1866, p. 212.) 



Having regard to intelligent countrymen and countrywomen taking scientific sus- 

 tenance from these weekly and monthly sources, and who might never see the pages 

 of the work reviewed, I ventured to call attention to the omitted reference in the 

 foot-note of my ' Preface,' viz., to the volume of ' Transactions of the Zoological 

 Society,' 1850, in which my theory of the extinction and conservation of species ap- 

 peared, including the passage quoted, with the obvious remark, that, ' if the difference 

 between 1858 (date of the D. T. or " Natural Selection") and 1866 (date of vol. i. of 

 Anat. of Vertebrates) puts the writer of the latter date in the subordinate relation 

 of " admitter " or "adopter" — tacit or otherwise — to the author of the same theory 

 at the earlier date, the writer of 1 858 must stand in the same relation to the author 

 of the same theory of 1850.' — (Letter to Ed. cl * London Review, May 1st, 1866.) 



Of course, to every competent judge, the difference between a theory founded on 

 the application of the principle of the contest for existence to the preservation or 

 extinction of certain species, and that of a theory of the origin of all species partially 

 based upon the same principle, must have been obvious; nor was any pretention 

 advanced, in the letter rectifying the date of the ' idea,' to the ample and instructive 

 degree in which it had been worked out, and doubtless as an original thought, by the 

 accomplished author of ccxnr". 



I deeply regretted, therefore, to see in a 'Historical Sketch' of the Progress of 

 Enquiry into the origin of species, prefixed to the fourth edition of that work (1866), 

 that Mr. Darwin, after affirming, inaccurately and without evidence, that I ' admitted 



