520 • OEIGIN ' AND ' TASMANIAN FLORA ' 
that I was aware of Darwin's views fourteen years before I 
adopted them, and I have done so solely and entirely from an 
independent study of plants themselves. 
Bentham, Thwaites, and Thomson are all shaken to the 
bottom. Asa Gray writes as differently as 'possible now, 
from what he did on first reading Darwin and Wallace. 
Henslow is fast changing and defending |- at least of Darwin's 
book ! at Cambridge against Sedgwick and Phillips, and is 
urgently recommending his students to buy the book and 
read it carefully. I have no wdsh to convert you, but I 
am extremely anxious that you should not commit yourself 
in your present state of very partial knowledge and strong 
feehng on a subject that requires years of thought and the 
calmest study, and above all a singleness of mind in seeking 
for truth at all hazards. 
It is one thing to say that Darwin has gone far too far 
(though I do not think so), and another to defend the present ^ 
weak illogical prejudices and ignorant attacks of geologists 
and theologians, or that w^orst of all class of scientifical- 
geological-theologians like Haughton, Miller, Sedgwick, etc., 
w^ho are like asses between bundles of hay, distorting their 
consciences to meet the double call on their public profession. 
The difficulties (scientific) of Darwin's views are appalling, 
but of the old doctrine insuperable. 
Ever yours, 
Jos. D. Hooker. 
As to the article in the July Quarterly Beview, the secret 
of its authorship soon leaked out. It was written by the 
Bishop of Oxford, a frequent contributor to the Quarterly.^ 
Internal evidence pointed to the prompter of his scientific 
ignorance. * He and Owen,' writes Hooker to Anderson in 
July, ' have published a most ridiculous article in the Quarterly 
against Darwin, absurd for its egregious ignorance and blunders 
in Nat. Science.' To scientific readers the most significant 
point about it was that one of the printed pages had been cut 
out and another substituted. ' What gigantic blunder had 
been detected at the last moment ? ' 
This ill-omened conjunction led up to the first decisive 
1 This was acknowledged in 1874, when the Bishop republished the article 
among his Contributions to the Quarterly. 
