l66 THE WRITING OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1859. 



I hope you do not think me a brute about your proof- 

 sheets. 



Farewell, yours affectionately, 



C. DARWIN. 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



Down, Sept. 2oth [1859]. 



MY DEAR LYELL. You once gave me intense pleasure, or 

 rather delight, by the way you were interested, in a manner 

 I never expected, in my Coral Reef notions, and now 

 you have again given me similar pleasure by the manner 

 you have noticed my species work.* Nothing could be more 

 satisfactory to me, and I thank you for myself, and even 

 more for the subject's sake, as I know well that the sentence 

 will make many fairly consider the subject, instead of ridiculing 

 it. Although your previously felt doubts on the immutability 

 of species, may have more influence in converting you (if you 

 be converted) than my book ; yet as I regard your verdict 

 as far more important in my own eyes, and I believe in the 

 eyes of the world than of any other dozen men, I am 

 naturally very anxious about it. Therefore let me beg you 

 to keep your mind open till you receive (in perhaps a 

 fortnight's time) my latter chapters, which are the most 



* Sir Charles was President of in animals and plants, are the same 



the Geological section at the meet- as those which in much longer 



ing of the British Association at periods produce species, and in a 



Aberdeen in 1859. The following still longer series of ages give rise 



passage occurs in the address : to differences of generic rank. He 



" On this difficult and mysterious appears to me to have succeeded 



subject a work will very shortly by his investigations and reasonings 



appear by Mr. Charles Darwin, the in throwing a flood of light on 



result of twenty years of observa- many classes of phenomena con- 



tions and experiments in Zoology, nected with the affinities, geographi- 



Botany, and Geology, by which he cal distribution, and geological suc- 



has been led to the conclusion that cession of organic beings, for which 



those powers of nature which give no other hypothesis has been able, 



rise to races and permanent varieties or has even attempted to account." 



