334 THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [i860. 



monstrous peculiarities. Look at the fineness of gradation in 

 the shells of successive sub-stages of the same great forma- 

 tion ; I could give many other considerations which made me 

 doubt such view. It holds, to a certain extent, with domestic 

 productions no doubt, where man preserves some abrupt 

 change in structure. It amused me to see Sir. R. Murchison 

 quoted as a judge- of affinities of animals, and it gave me a 

 cold shudder to hear of any one speculating about a true 

 crustacean giving birth to a true fish ! * 



Yours most truly, 



C. DARWIN. 



C. Danvin to C. LyelL 



Down, September ist [1860]. 



MY DEAR LYELL, I have been much interested by your 

 letter of the 28th, received this morning. It has delighted me, 

 because it demonstrates that you have thought a good deal 

 lately on Natural Selection. Few things have surprised me 

 more than the entire paucity of objections and difficulties 

 new to me in the published reviews. Your remarks are of 

 a different stamp and new to me. I will run through them, 

 and make a few pleadings such as occur to me. 



I put in the possibility of the Galapagos having been con- 

 tinuously joined to America, out of mere subservience to the 

 many who believe in Forbes's doctrine, and did not see the 

 danger of admission, about small mammals surviving there 

 in such case. The case of the Galapagos, from certain facts 

 on littoral sea-shells (viz. Pacific Ocean and South American 

 littoral species), in fact convinced me more than in any other 

 case of other islands, that the Galapagos had never been 



* Parsons, loc. cit. p. 5, speaking nearly a fish that some of its ova 



of Pterichthys and Cephalaspis, may have become fish ; or, if itself 



says: " Now is it too much to infer a fish, was so nearly a crustacean 



from these facts that either of these that it may have been born from 



animals, if a crustacean, was so the ovum of a crustacean ? " 



