!64 SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [1861. 



much about Natural Selection ; but that seems to me utterly- 

 unimportant, compared to the question of Creation or Modifr- 

 fication."] 



C. Darwin to Asa Gray. 



Down, April 11 [1S61]. 



My dear Gray, — I was very glad to get your photograph : 

 I am expecting mine, which I will send off as soon as it comes. 

 It is an ugly affair, and I fear the fault does not lie with the 

 photographer. .... Since writing last, I have had several 

 letters full of the highest commendation of your Essay ; all 

 agree that it is by far the best thing written, and I do not 

 doubt it has done the ' Origin ' much good. I have not yet 

 heard how it has sold. You will have seen a review in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle. Poor dear Henslow, to whom I owe 

 much, is dying, and Hooker is with him. Many thanks for 

 two sets of sheets of your Proceedings. I cannot understand 

 what Agassiz is driving at. You once spoke, I think, of Pro- 

 fessor Bowen as a very clever man. I should have thought 

 him a singularly unobservant man from his writings. He 

 never can have seen much of animals, or he would have 

 seen the difference of old and wise dogs and young ones. 

 His paper about hereditariness beats everything. Tell a 

 breeder that he might pick out his worst individual animals 

 and breed from them, and hope to win a prize, and he would 

 think you insane. 



[Professor Henslow died on May 16, 1861, from a compli- 

 cation of bronchitis, congestion of the lungs, and enlargement 

 of the heart. His strong constitution was slow in giving way, 

 and he lingered for weeks in a painful condition of weakness, 

 knowing that his end was near, and looking at death with 

 fearless eyes. In Mr. Blomefield's (Jenyns) ' Memoir of 

 Henslow' (1862) is a dignified and touching description of 

 Prof. Sedgwick's farewell visit to his old friend. Sedgwick 

 said afterwards that he had never seen " a human being whose 

 soul was nearer heaven." 



My father wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker on hearing of Hens- 



