388 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



a chapter. I can only say here that the writer has not a suffi- 

 cient grasp of the elementary laws of distribution to enable 

 him to grapple with the subject. One example of this will 

 suffice. He says, " Plants are not, as a fact, carried far by 

 wind, Corsican, Sardinian, and Sicilian plants not occurring in 

 Italy." No one who understands the first principles of evolu- 

 tion by natural selection could have made such a statement. 

 And as to his alleged "fact," I have given overwhelming 

 evidence against it in my book. 



Mr. Darwin informs me, however, that he thinks the great 

 German botanist, Engler, is favourable to my views ; but 

 what is very much more important is that Sir Joseph Hooker 

 himself accepts them, and I have his permission (February, 

 1905) to quote the following passages referring to the whole 

 book, from a letter written in 1880, and to say that he has 

 not changed his opinion : — 



" I think you have made an immense advance to our 

 knowledge of the ways and means of distribution, and bridged 

 many great gaps. Your reasoning seems to me to be sound 

 throughout, though I am not prepared to receive it in all its 

 details." 



And again : " I very much like your whole working of the 

 problem of the isolation and connection of New Zealand and 

 Australia inter se, and with the countries north of them ; and 

 the whole treatment of that respecting north and south 

 migration over the Globe is admirable." 



For those who have not my "Island Life," there is a 

 compact statement of the whole argument in my "Dar- 

 winism," pp. 36i-373« 



9. In 1 88 1 I put forth the first idea of mouth-gesture as a 

 factor in the origin of language, in a review of E. P. Tylor's 

 "Anthropology," and in 1895 I extended it into an article in 

 the Fortnightly Review, and reprinted it with a few further 

 corrections in my " Studies," under the title, " The Expres- 

 siveness of Speech or Mouth-Gesture as a Factor in the Origin 

 of Language." In it I have developed a completely new 

 principle in the theory of the origin of language by showing 



