516 * OEIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLOKA ' 
and Botanical Association, which his friends thought rather 
unworthy of the occasion, and which in the following October 
he sent to Darwin ' with the writer's repentance.' 
Kew : Tuesda3% 1860. 
My dear Harvey, — I send you an answer from Darwin, 
to whom I wrote for information as to Primroses, etc. I 
never went into the case myself ; regarding it as one that 
wanted working out by Herbarium as well as garden. You 
will see that he offers you his MS. ! He is a noble fellow ; 
he little knows the coals of fire he is heaping on your head ! 
Again let me caution you how you play with these questions. 
You have not the faintest conception of their difficulty, 
magnitude, and importance, I do assure you ; study the 
question, experiment a little, or earnestly seek for light by 
taking up some great orders or groups etc. and endeavour- 
ing to understand the relations between all the tribes, genera^ 
and varieties, leaving species as S'pecies out of view for a 
time. Do not snatch at superficial observations and commit 
yourself to superficial observations on them. Keep your 
opinion of species and confirm it, if you can, but if you are 
going to write about it, study it first ; and behave like a 
NaturaHst of 30 years' standing before the world, not like 
a superficial geologist or ignorant priest. I say ignorant 
advisedly, for I hold Whately and Sedgwick to be as really 
ignorant of the fundaments of Natural History as I am of 
Church History or you of fluxions. The eyes of the intelligent 
unscientific enquirers are now upon us, and I am most 
anxious that, for the credit of the age w^e live in, some 
naturalists at any rate should appear as earnest enquirers 
and honest workers, and should show that we have some- 
thing more and better to show for our creed in the matter 
of species, than what satisfied us a quarter of a century ago, 
when the higher departments of Biology were nowhere. 
There is plenty to be said on both sides of the question, but 
nothing worth saying that is not the product of thought and 
study. Above all things remember that this reception of 
Darwin's book is the exact parallel of the reception that 
every great progressive move in science has met with in 
all ages ; it is widely different from the reception of the 
' Vestiges.* No good naturalist praised it, whilst seven of 
the ablest men of this day (and a host of smaller fry) pro- 
