Professor Lankester and Lamarck 237 
means of modification; but if this impression were to 
prevail, I cannot think I should have much difficulty in 
removing it. At any rate no such misapprehension could 
endure for more than twenty years, during which I con- 
tinued to address a public who welcomed all I wrote, unless 
I myself aided and abetted the mistake. Mr. Darwin 
wrote many books, but the impression that Darwinism and 
evolution, or descent with modification, are identical is 
still nearly as prevalent as it was soon after the appearance 
of the ‘“‘ Origin of Species ; ’’ the reason of this is, that Mr. 
Darwin was at no pains to correct us. Where, in any one 
of his many later books, is there a passage which sets the 
matter in its true light, and enters a protest against the 
misconception of which Professor Ray Lankester complains 
so bitterly? The only inference from this is, that Mr. 
Darwin was not displeased at our thinking him to be the 
originator of the theory of descent with modification, and 
did not want us to know more about Lamarck than he 
could help. If we wanted to know about him, we must 
find out what he had said for ourselves, it was no part of 
Mr. Darwin’s business to tell us; he had no interest in 
our catching the distinctive difference between himself 
and that writer ; perhaps not ; but this approaches closely 
to wishing us to misunderstand it. When Mr. Darwin 
wished us to understand this or that, no one knew better 
how to show it to us. 
We were aware, on reading the “‘ Origin of Species,”’ that 
there was a something about it of which we had not full 
hold ; nevertheless we gave Mr. Darwin our confidence at 
once, partly because he led off by telling us that we must 
trust him to a great extent, and explained that the present 
book was only an instalment of a larger work which, when 
it came out, would make everything perfectly clear ; 
partly, again, because the case for descent with modifica- 
tion, which was the leading idea throughout the book, was 
so obviously strong, but perhaps mainly because every one 
