296 THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [i860. 



as you could include in a letter. I have always admired your 

 various memoirs so much that I should be eminently glad to 

 receive your opinion, which might be of real service to me. 



Pray do not suppose that I expect to convert or pervert 

 you; if I could stagger you in ever so slight a degree I 

 should be satisfied ; nor fear to annoy me by severe criticisms, 

 for I have had some hearty kicks from some of my best 

 friends. If it would not be disagreeable to you to send me 

 your opinion, I certainly should be truly obliged. . . . 



C. Darwin to Asa Gray. 



Down, April 3 [1860]. 



.... I remember well the time when the thought of the 

 eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of 

 the complaint, and now small trifling particulars of structure 

 often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather 

 in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick ! . . . 



You may like to hear about reviews on my book. Sedg- 

 wick (as I and Lyell feel certain from internal evidence) has 

 reviewed me savagely and unfairly in the Spectator* The 

 notice includes much abuse, and is hardly fair in several 

 respects. He would actually lead any one, who was ignorant 

 of geology, to suppose that I had invented the great gaps 

 between successive geological formations, instead of its being 

 an almost universally admitted dogma. But my. dear old 

 friend Sedgwick, with his noble heart, is old, and is rabid with 

 indignation. It is hard to please every one ; you ma}' 

 remember that in my last letter I asked you to leave out 

 about the Weald denudation : I told Jukes this (who is head 

 man of the Irish geological survey), and he blamed me much, 

 for he believed every word of it, and thought it not at all 

 exaggerated ! In fact, geologists have no means of gauging 

 the infinitude of past time. There has been one prodigy of a 



* See the quotations which follow the present letter. 



