1863.] 'ANTIQUITY OF MAN.' 201 



work. As for Lamarck, as you have such a man as Grove 

 with you, you are triumphant ; not that I can alter my opin- 

 ion that to me it was an absolutely useless book. Perhaps 

 this was owing to my always searching books for facts, per- 

 haps from knowing my grandfather's earlier and identically 

 the same speculation. I will only further say that if I can 

 analyse my own feelings (a very doubtful process), it is near- 

 ly as much for your sake as for my own, that I so much wish 

 that your state of belief could have permitted you to say 

 boldly and distinctly out that species were not separately 

 created. I have generally told you the progress of opinion, 

 as I have heard it, on the species question. A first-rate Ger- 

 man naturalist * (I now forget the name !), who has lately 

 published a grand folio, has spoken out to the utmost extent 

 on the 'Origin.' De Candolle, in a very good paper on 

 " Oaks," goes, in Asa Gray's opinion, as far as he himself 

 does ; but De Candolle, in writing to me, says we, "we think 

 this and that ; " so that I infer he really goes to the full ex- 

 tent with me, and tells me of a French good botanical palae- 

 ontologist (name forgotten),! who writes to De Candolle that 

 he is sure that my views will ultimately prevail. But I did 

 not intend to have written all this. It satisfies me with the 

 final results, but this result, I begin to see, will take two or 

 three lifetimes. The entomologists are enough to keep the 

 subject back for half a century. I really pity your having to 

 balance the claims of so many eager aspirants for notice ; it 

 is clearly impossible to satisfy all. . . . Certainly I was struck 

 with the full and due honour you conferred on Falconer. 

 I have just had a note from Hooker. ... I am heartily glad 

 that you have made him so conspicuous ; he is so honest, so 

 candid, and so modest. . . . 



I have read . I could find nothing to lay hold of, 



* No doubt Ffaeckel, whose monograph on the Radiolaria was pub- 

 lished in 1862. In the same year Professor W. Preyer of Jena published 

 a Dissertation on A lea impennis, which was one of the earliest pieces of 

 special work on the basis of the ' Origin of Species.' 



f The Marquis de Saporta. 



