120 THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [i860. 



you have made a mistake in being a botanist, you ought 

 to have been a lawyer. 



.... Henslow * and Daubeny are shaken. I hear from 

 Hooker that he hears from Hochstetter that my views are 

 making very considerable progress in Germany, and the good 

 workers are discussing the question. Bronn at the end of his 

 translation has a chapter of criticism, but it is such difficult 

 German that I have not yet read it. Hopkins's review in 

 ' Fraser ' is thought the best which has appeared against us. 

 I believe that Hopkins is so much opposed because his course 

 of study has never led him to reflect much on such subjects 

 as geographical distribution, classification, homologies, &c, 

 so that he does not feel it a relief to have some kind of 

 explanation. 



C. Dariuin to C. Lyell. 



Hartfield [Sussex], July 30th [i860]. 



I had lots of pleasant letters about the Brit. 



Assoc, and our side seems to have got on very well. There 

 has been as much discussion on the other side of the Atlantic 

 as on this. No one I think understands the whole case better 

 than Asa Gray, and he has been fighting nobly. He is a 

 capital reasoner. I have sent one of his printed discussions 

 to our Athenoznm, and the editor says he will print it. The 

 ' Quarterly ' has been out some time. It contains no malice, 



* Professor Henslow was mentioned in the December number of ' Mac- 

 millan's Magazine ' as being an adherent of Evolution. In consequence 

 of this he published, in the February number of the following year, a let- 

 ter defining his position. This he did by means of an extract from a let- 

 ter addressed to him by the Rev. L. Jenyns (Blomefield) which " very 

 nearly," as he says, expressed his views. Mr. Blomefield wrote, " I was 

 not aware that you had become a convert to his (Darwin's) theory, and can 

 hardly suppose you have accepted it as a whole, though, like myself, you 

 may go to the length of imagining that many of the smaller groups, both of 

 animals and plants, may at some remote period have had a common parent- 

 age. I do not with some say that the whole of his theory cannot be true 

 — but that it is very far from proved ; and I doubt its ever being possible 

 to prove it." 



