170 Luck, or Cunning ? 
“My work,” continues Mr. Darwin, ‘‘is now nearly 
finished ; but as it will take me two or three years to com- 
plete it, and as my health is far from strong, I have been 
urged to publish this abstract. I have been more especially 
induced to do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying 
the natural history of the Malay Archipelago, has arrived at 
almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on 
the origin of species.” Mr. Darwin was naturally anxious 
to forestall Mr. Wallace, and hurried up with his book. 
What reader, on finding descent with modification to be 
its most prominent feature, could doubt—especially if new 
to the subject, as the greater number of Mr. Darwin’s 
readers in 1859 were—that this same descent with modifica- 
tion was the theory which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace had 
jointly hit upon, and which Mr. Darwin was so anxious to 
show that he had not been hasty in adopting ? When Mr. 
Darwin went on to say that his abstract would be very 
imperfect, and that he could not give references and authori- 
ties for his several statements, we did not suppose that such 
an apology could be meant to cover silence concerning 
writers who during their whole lives, or nearly so, had 
borne the burden and heat of the day in respect of descent 
with modification in its most extended application. “I 
much regret,’ says Mr. Darwin, “that want of space 
prevents my having the satisfaction of acknowledging the 
generous assistance I have received from very many natural- 
ists, some of them personally unknown to me.” This is 
like what the Royal Academicians say when they do not 
intend to hang our pictures ; they can, however, generally 
find space for a picture if they want to hang it, and we 
assume with safety that there are no master-works by 
painters of the very highest rank for which no space has 
been available. Want of space will, indeed, prevent my 
quoting from more than one other paragraph of Mr. 
Darwin’s introduction; this paragraph, however, should 
alone suffice to show how inaccurate Mr. Allen is in saying 
