338 THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [i860. 



earnest. Very striking letter altogether and it rejoices the 

 cockles of my heart. 



.... How I shall miss you, my best and kindest of 

 friends. God bless you. 



Yours ever affectionately, 



C. DARWIN. 



C. Darwin to Asa Gray. 



Down, Sept. 10 [1860]. 



.... You will be weary of my praise, but it * does strike 

 me as quite admirably argued, and so well and pleasantly 

 written. Your many metaphors are inimitably good. I said 

 in a former letter that you were a lawyer, but I made a gross 

 mistake, I am sure [that you are a poet. No, by Jove, I will 

 tell you what you are, a hybrid, a complex cross of lawyer, 

 poet, naturalist and theologian ! Was there ever such a 

 monster seen before ? 



I have just looked through the passages which I have 

 marked as appearing'to me extra good, but I see that they 

 are too numerous to specify, and this is no exaggeration. My 

 eye just alights on the happy comparison of the colours of 

 the prism and our artificial groups. I see one little error of 

 fossil cattle in South America. 



It is curious how each one, I suppose, weighs arguments in 

 a different balance : embryology is to me by far the strongest 

 single class of facts in favour of change of forms, and not one, 

 I think, of my reviewers has alluded to this. Variation not 

 coming on at a. very early age, and being inherited at not 

 a very early corresponding period, explains, as it seems to 

 me, the grandest of all facts in natural history, or rather in 

 zoology, viz. the resemblance of embryos. 



[Dr. Gray wrote three articles in the 'Atlantic Monthly ' for 

 * Dr. Grayjn the ' Atlantic Monthly ' for July, 1860. 



