204 ^ 4 . C. Seward. 
The hawks behaved like gentlemen, and have cast up pellets with 
lots of seeds in them.” ' 
The two following extracts illustrate the strength of the friend¬ 
ship between the two men :—“ Shall you think me very impudent,” 
writes Darwin in 1857, “if I tell you that I have sometimes thought 
that . . . you are a little too hard on bad observers ; that a remark 
made by a bad observer cannot be right; an observer who deserves 
to be damned, you utterly damn.” 2 In a later letter,—“ How 
candidly and meekly you took my Jeremiad on your severity to 
second-class men. After I had sent it off, an ugly little voice asked 
me, once or twice, how much of my noble defence of the poor in 
spirit and in fact, was owing to your having not seldom smashed 
favourite notions of my own,” 3 
In 1846 Darwin’s letters contain references to the suggested 
preliminary publication of his views on species, which was carried 
into effect in 1858 on July 1st, when a joint communication from 
Darwin and Wallace was read before the Linnean Society. It was 
at the instigation of Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker that 
Darwin on learning that Wallace “in a sudden flash of insight ” had 
conceived the idea of Natural Selection, agreed to make public his 
views. A few days after the paper was read Darwin wrote to 
Hooker,—“ If you see Lyell, will you tell him how very grateful I feel 
for his kind interest in this affair of mine. You must know that I 
look at it as very important for the reception of the view of species 
not being immutable, the fact of the greatest geologist and 
botanist in England taking any sort of interest in the subject. 1 am 
sure it will do much to break down prejudices.” 4 An address 
by Sir Joseph Hooker at the Darwin-Wallace celebration on July 
1st in 1906, by the Linnean Society, concludes with these words,— 
“ It remains for me to ask for your forgiveness for intruding upon 
your time and attention with the half-century old, real or fancied 
memories of a nonagenarian as contributions to the history of the 
most notable event in the Annals of Biology that followed the 
appearance in 1735 of the “ Systema Naturae ” of Linnaeus.” 5 
Writing to Wallace in 1859 Darwin says,—“ Dr. Hooker has 
become almost as heterodox as you or I, and I look at Hooker as 
by far the most capable judge in Europe.” To the same friend 
Darwin wrote,—“ Hooker is publishing a grand Introduction to 
the Flora of Australia, and goes the whole length.” 6 
1 Ibid, p. 85. 2 Ibid, p. 92. 3 Ibid, p. 96. 4 Ibid, p. 127. 
* The Darwin-Wallace Celebration (London, 1908), p. 16. 
6 L. and L., Vol. II, pp. 146, 163. 
