2O8 PUBLICATION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [1859. 



.... But these are small matters, mere spots on the sun. 

 Your comparison of the letters retained in words, when 

 no longer wanted for the sound, to rudimentary organs is 

 excellent, as both are truly genealogical. 



The want of peculiar birds in Madeira is a greater difficulty 

 than seemed to me allowed for. I could cite passages where 

 you show that variations are superinduced from the new cir- 

 cumstances of new colonists, which would require some 

 Madeira birds, like those of the Galapagos, to be peculiar. 

 There has been ample time in the case of Madeira and Porto 

 Santo. . . . 



You enclose your sheets in old MS., so the Post Office very 

 properly charge them, as letters, 2d. extra. I wish all their 

 fines on MS. were worth as much. I paid 4^. 6d. for such 

 wash the other day from Paris, from a man who can prove 

 300 deluges in the valley of Seine. 



With my hearty congratulations to you on your grand 

 work, believe me, 



Ever very affectionately yours, 



CHAS. LYELL. 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



Ilkley, Yorkshire, 



October nth [1859]. 



MY DEAR LYELL, I thank you cordially for giving me so 

 much of your valuable time in writing me the long letter of 

 3rd, and still longer of 4th. I wrote a line with the missing 

 proof-sheet to Scarborough. I have adopted most thankfully 

 all your minor corrections in the last chapter, and the greater 

 ones as far as I could with little trouble. I damped the 

 opening passage about the eye (in my bigger work I show 

 the gradations in structure of the eye) by putting merely 

 " complex organs." But you are a pretty Lord Chancellor to 

 tell the barrister on one side how best to win the cause J 

 The omission of " living " before eminent naturalists was a 

 dreadful blunder. 



