528 THE WRITING OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1859. 



pass, you seem to think, that because they suffer prodigious 

 destruction during droughts, that they would all be destroyed. 

 In the " gran secos " of La Plata, the indigenous animals, such 

 as the American deer, die by thousands, and suffer apparently 

 as much as the cattle. In parts of India, after a drought, it 

 takes ten or more years before the indigenous mammals get 

 up to their full number again. Your argument would, I think, 

 apply to the aborigines as well as to the feral. 



An animal or plant which becomes feral in one small ter- 

 ritory might be destroyed by climate, but I can hardly believe 

 so, when once feral over several large territories. Again, I 

 feel inclined to swear at climate : do not think me impudent 

 for attacking you about climate. You say you doubt whether 

 man could have existed under the Eocene climate, but man 

 can now withstand the climate of Esquimaux-land and West 

 Equatorial Africa ; and surely you do not think the Eocene 

 climate differed from the present throughout all Europe, as 

 much as the Arctic regions differ from Equatorial Africa ? 



With respect to organisms being created on the American 

 type in America, it might, I think, be said that they were 

 so created to prevent them being too well created, so as to 

 beat the aboiigines ; but this seems to me, somehow, a mon- 

 strous doctrine. 



I have reflected a good deal on what you say on the neces- 

 sity of continued intervention of creative power. I cannot 

 see this necessity ; and its admission, I think, would make 

 the theory of Natural Selection valueless. Grant a simple 

 Archetypal creature, like the Mud-fish or Lepidonsiren, with 

 the five senses and some vestige of mind, and I believe natural 

 selection will account for the production of every vertebrate 

 animal. 



Farewell ; forgive me for indulging in this prose, and 

 believe me, with cordial thanks, 



Your ever attached disciple, 



C. Darwin. 



P. S. — When, and if, you reread, I supplicate you to write 

 on the margin the word " expand," when too condensed, or 



