333 MEMOIR OF BR HARVEY. 



inductions on it, and to force all things to converge on one 

 point, then I draw back, thinking with Hamlet, that there may 

 be things in the scheme of creation which are not explained, 

 although (they may be " dreamt of ") in our philosophy. A 

 good deal of Darwin reads to me like an ingenious dream. 



Plassey, Saturday night, 



January, 1861. 



My dear Mrs. Gatty, 



I hope your Red Snow aquarium may answer, but I don't 

 think it can ever be very ornamental ; even if it flourishes 

 wondrously, it will look like a patch of blood on a stone. "Ah !" 

 but say you poetically, "a sang-real," and so you will be 

 pleased. 'Tis thus we make our pleasure or pain for ourselves, 

 according to the way we look at anything, even at a Proto- 

 coccus. 



Tell Wolff that if Nachash was a rattlesnake, then Eden was 

 in America (probably where Master Chuzzlewit found it), and 

 the "fever and ague are the flaming sword that keeps the way 

 of the tree of life." There are no rattlesnakes except in 

 America. '"' Ah !" but says Wolff, " there were once." "May 

 be so," says I ; " pray read my Tenth Conversation of Charles 

 and Josiah." You will say I am a sad heretic. I assure you 

 that Tenth Conversation was written word for word as it is now 

 printed (it came to me to-day, so I suppose it has gone to 

 Dr. Gatty) at sea, on board the John Wesley Mission yacht, 

 sailing on the broad Pacific between the Fiji Islands and 

 Rotumah. The Natural History part of the conversation was 

 suggested to me by what I heard talked among the missionaries 

 on board, who all seemed to believe in some such hypothetical 

 state of the early world, such as I have put into Josiah's mouth. 

 Some of it will hit your notions of a decayed world, " cursed for 



man's sin," and you will be down upon me in the . Don't 



mind ; slash away ; I never see that paper, and so it will not 

 hurt me. Besides, I know your weakness (strength ?) on that 

 point. 



I am not at all surprised to hear that the literal Hebrew of 

 the 1st Genesis leaves Geology and Astronomy perfectly open 

 questions. I should have been much surprised if it were other- 

 wise. I never thought of looking for Natural History in the 



