'857-59 DARWIN’S ‘ORIGIN OF SPECIES’ 91 
'lie in a letter by an old and very distinguished 
friend you would not wonder at me being sen- 
sitive, perhaps ridiculously sensitive. Forgive 
these remarks. I should be a dolt not to value 
your scientific opinion very highly. If my views 
^re in the main correct, whatever value they may^ 
possess in pushing on science will now depend 
t'ery little on me, but on the verdict pronounced 
fly men eminent in science. 
‘ Believe me, 
‘ Yours very truly, 
‘ C. Darwin.’ 
In the early part of this letter Darwin says 
is not able to hunt up some information for 
"'hich Owen has asked, as his ‘ notes for the 
latter chapters are a chaos.’ The ‘old and very 
•distinguished friend’ Dr. Francis Darwin con- 
siders to be Adam Sedgwick. 
If not ‘dead against’ the theory of Natural 
^slection, Owen at first looked askance at it, prefer- 
’’"ig the idea of the great scheme of Nature which 
lie had himself advanced. He was of opinion 
that the operation of external influences and the 
•'esulting ‘contest of existence’ lead to certain 
Species becoming extinct. Thus it came about, he 
®iipposed, that, like the dodo in recent times, the 
dinornis and other gigantic birds had disappeared. 
Dut he never, so far as can be ascertained, ex- 
Pi'^ssed a definite opinion on Darwinism, and 
