ET. 49.] TO CHARLES DARWIN. 457 
I hope next week to get printed sheets of my review 
from New Haven, and send them to you, and will ask 
you to pass them on to Dr. Hooker. 
To fulfill your request, I ought to tell you what I 
think the weakest, and what the best, part of your 
book. But this is not easy, nor to be done in a word 
or two. The best part, I think, is the whole, that is, 
its plan and treatment, the vast amount of facts and 
acute inferences handled as if you had a perfect mas- 
tery of them. I do not think twenty years too much 
time to produce such a book in. 
Style clear and good, but now and then wants revi- 
sion for little matters (p. 97, self-fertilizes itself, etc.). 
Then your candor is worth everything to your cause. 
It is refreshing to find a person with a new theory 
who frankly confesses that he finds difficulties, insur- 
mountable at least for the present. I know some 
people who never have any difficulties to speak of. 
The moment I understood your premises, I felt sure 
you had a real foundation to hold on. Well, if one 
admits your premises, I do not see how he is to stop 
short of your conclusions, as a probable hypothesis at 
least. 
It naturally happens that my review of your book 
does not exhibit anything like the full force of the 
impression the book has made upon me. Under the 
circumstances I suppose I do your theory more good 
here, by bespeaking for it a fair and favorable con- 
sideration, and by standing noncommitted as to its 
full conclusion, than I should if I announced myself a 
convert ; nor could I say the latter, with truth. 
Well, what seems to me the weakest point in the 
book is the attempt to account for the formation of 
organs, the making of eyes, ete., by natural selection. 
Some of this sete: quite , PEE 
