238 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



be smitten with a homing instinct in such large 

 numbers with the fifth edition ? It cannot be main- 

 tained that Mr. Darwin had had his attention called 

 now for the first time to the fact that he had used 

 my perhaps a little too freely, and had better be more 

 sparing of it for the future. The my excised in 1866 

 shows that Mr. Darwin had already considered this 

 question, and saw no reason to remove any but the 

 one that left him no loophole. Why, then, should 

 that which was considered and approved in 1859, 

 1 86 1, and 1866 (not to mention the second edition 

 of 1859 or i860) be retreated from with every ap- 

 pearance of panic in 1869? Mr. Darwin could not 

 well have cut out more than he did — not at any rate 

 without saying something about it, and it would not 

 be easy to know exactly what to say. Of the fourteen 

 my's that were left in 1869, five more were cut out 

 in 1872, and nine only were allowed eventually to 

 remain. We naturally ask. Why leave any if thu-ty- 

 six ought to be cut out, or why cut out thirty-six if 

 nine ought to be left — especially when the claim 

 remains practically just the same after the excision 

 as before it ? 



I imagine complaint had early reached Mr. Darwin 

 that the difierence between himself and his predecessors 

 was unsubstantial and hard to grasp ; traces of some 

 such feeling appear even in the late Sir Charles Ly ell's 

 " Principles of Geology," in which he writes that he 

 had reprinted his abstract of Lamarck's doctrine word 

 for word, " in justice to Lamarck, in order to show 

 how nearly the opinions taught by him at the begin- 



