ory_.

You begin by criticising the _title_. Now, though I consider the title
admirable, I believe it is not Mr. Darwin's but the Publisher's, as you
are no doubt aware that publishers _will_ have a taking title, and
authors must and do give way to them. Mr. D. gave me a different title
before the book came out. Again, you misquote and misunderstand Huxley,
who is a complete convert. Prof. Asa Gray and Dr. Hooker, the two first
botanists of Europe and America, are converts. And Lyell, the first
geologist living, who has all his life written against such conclusions
as Darwin arrives at, is a convert and is about to declare or already
has declared his conversion--a noble and almost unique example of a man
yielding to conviction on a subject which he has taught as a master all
his life, and confessing that he has all his life been wrong.

It is clear that you have not yet sufficiently read the book to enable
you to criticise it. It is a book in which every page and almost every
line has a bearing on the main argument, and it is very difficult to
bear in mind such a variety of facts, arguments and indications as are
brought forward. It was only on the _fifth_ perusal that I fully
appreciated the whole strength of the work, and as I had been long
before familiar with the same subjects I cannot but think that persons
less familiar with them cannot have any clear idea of the accumulated
argument by a single perusal.

Your objections, so far as I can see anything definite in them, are so
fully and clearly anticipated and answered in the book itself that it is
perfectly useless my saying anything about them. It seems to me,
however, as clear as daylight that the principle of Natural Selection
_must_ act in nature. It is almost as necessary a truth as any of
mathematics. Next, the effects produced by this action _cannot be
limited._ It cannot be shown that there _is_ any limit to them in
nature. Again, the millions of facts in the numerical relations of
organic beings, their geographical distribution, their relations of
affinity, the modification of their parts and organs, the phenomena of
intercrossing, embryology and morphology--all are in accordance with his
theory, and almost all are necessary results from it; while on the other
theory they are all isolated facts having no connection with each other
and as utterly inexplicable and confusing as fossils are on the theory
that they are special creations and are not the remain