196 Asa Gray. 



oration of Darwin's other publications. His mind was not 

 very strongly bound to opinions about species, partly because 

 of his natural openness to facts, his conclusions seeming always 

 to have only a reasonable prominence in his philosophical 

 mind, rarely enough to exclude the free entrance of the new, 

 whatever the source, and to a considerable extent from the 

 difficulties he had experienced in defining species and genera 

 amidst the wide diversities and approximate blendings which 

 variation had introduced. 



Darwin first mentioned to Gray his view that " species arise 

 like varieties, with much extinction," in a letter to Gray of 

 July 20th, 1856.* At this time all men of science with a rare 

 exception believed in the permanence of species. J. D. 

 Hooker's Flora Indica of 1855 "assumes that species are dis- 

 tinct creations. "f Prof. Huxley, in his history of the recep- 

 tion of Darwinian ideas, says, with the perfect fairness that 

 always has characterized him, that "within the ranks of the 

 biologists, at that time [1851-8], I met with nobody [and he 

 here includes himself] except Dr. Grant, of University College, 

 who had a word to say for evolution ; and his advocacy was 

 not calculated to advance the cause. Outside of these ranks, 

 the only person known to me whose knowledge and capacity 

 compelled respect, and who was, at the same time, a thorough- 

 going evolutionist, was Herbert Spencer. . „ . But even 

 my friend's rare dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustra- 

 tion could not drive me from my agnostic position." Lyell, he 

 shows, was leaning that way, but not himself. So it was in 

 1857, and in 1858 up to the publication of Darwin's and Wal- 

 lace's papers of that year.:}: 



Gray therefore knew of Darwin's views before the biologists 

 of Britain, unless we except Lyell and J. D. Hooker. Darwin 

 acknowledged Gray's " remarkably kind letter " on the 5th of 

 September, 1857,§ and is prompted by his "extraordinary 

 kindness," and, evidently, by his assurances, that he had no objec- 

 tions to facts from any source, had great interest in the subject, 

 and only saw some " grave difficulties " against his doctrine, to 



* Darwin's Life and Letters, p. 437. 



\ G-ray's review, this Journal, xxi, 135, Jan., 1856. 



X Darwin's Life and Letters, chapter xiv of vol. i, by Prof. Huxley. 



§Ibid, p. 477. 



