The Excised “ My’s” 205 
feeling appear even in the late Sir Charles Lyell’s “ Princi- 
ples 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 beginning of this century resembled 
those now in vogue among a large body of naturalists 
respecting the infinite variability of species, and the pro- 
gressive development in past time of the organic world.’’* 
Sir Charles Lyell could not have written thus if he had 
thought that Mr. Darwin had already done “‘ justice to 
Lamarck,’ nor is it likely that he stood alone in thinking as 
he did. It is probable that more reached Mr. Darwin than 
reached the public, and that the historical sketch prefixed 
to all editions after the first six thousand copies had been 
sold—meagre and slovenly as it is—was due to earlier 
manifestation on the part of some of Mr. Darwin’s friends 
of the feeling that was afterwards expressed by Sir Charles 
Lyell in the passage quoted above. I suppose the removal 
of the my that was cut out in 1866 to be due partly to the 
Gladstonian tendencies of Mr. Darwin’s mind, which would 
naturally make that particular my at all times more or 
less offensive to him, and partly to the increase of objection 
to it that must have ensued on the addition of the “ brief 
but imperfect ” historical sketch in 1861 ; it is doubtless 
only by an oversight that this particular my was not cut 
out in 1861. The stampede of 1869 was probably occa- 
sioned by the appearance in Germany of Professor Haeckel’s 
“ History of Creation.”” This was published in 1868, and 
Mr. Darwin no doubt foresaw that it would be translated 
into English, as indeed it subsequently was. In this book 
some account is given—very badly, but still much more 
fully than by Mr. Darwin—of Lamarck’s work ; and even 
Erasmus Darwin is mentioned—inaccurately—but still 
heis mentioned. Professor Haeckel says :— 
“ Although the theory of development had been already 
* “ Principles of Geology,” vol. ii., chap. xxxiv., ed. 1872. 
