214 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES I88I- 



And now for your last letter. Eead in the light 

 of subsequent experience, I have no doubt that I 

 ought to have expressed myself with more care while 

 writing my paper. But, to tell the honest truth, it 

 never once occurred to me that I of all men could be 

 suspected of trying to undermine the theories of 

 Darwin. I was entirely filled with the one idea of 

 presenting what seemed to me ' a supplementary 

 hjrpothesis,' which, while ' in no way opposed to 

 natural selection,' would ' release the latter from the 

 only difficulties ' which to my mind it had ever pre- 

 sented. Therefore I took it for granted that every- 

 body would go with me in recognising natural selec- 

 tion as the ' boss ' round which every ' other theory ' 

 must revolve, without my having to say so on every 

 page. So, of course, by 'other theory' I did not mean 

 that physiological selection was in my opinion the 

 only theory of the origin of species. Everywhere 

 throughout the paper, from the title-page to the con- 

 clusion, I represented it as an 'additional suggestion,' 

 a ' supplementary hypothesis,' &c., &c. Sexual selec- 

 tion is in my view (as it is also in Darwin's, Wallace's, 

 and doubtless that of all evolutionists) one of the 

 ' other theories that have been propounded on the 

 origin of species.' So is Lamarck's theory, which 

 was considered by Darwin as more or less 'supplemen- 

 tary' to natural selection; and this is all that I meant 

 — or, I should say, could possibly be understood to 

 mean in view of the title-page, &c. — by speaking of 

 physiological selection as another theory of the origin 

 of species. It certainly is not the same thing as natural 

 selection or either of the ' other theories ' just men- 



