cause of Evolution by publishing, almost
simultaneously with the _Origin of Species_, his splendid memoir on _The
Flora of Australia, its Origin, Affinities, and Distribution_, in which
similar views were, not obscurely, indicated. Of Lyell, Darwin's other
friend and counsellor, Huxley justly says:

'Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the antitransmutationists
(who regarded him, ever afterwards, as Pallas Athene may have
looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair), declared himself a
Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious _caveat_.
Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength and his courageous
stand for truth as against consistency, did him infinite
honour[139].'

Huxley himself accepted the theory of Natural Selection--but not without
some important reservations--these, however, did not prevent him from
becoming its most ardent and successful champion. Darwin used to
acknowledge Huxley's great service to him in undertaking the defence of
the theory--a defence which his own hatred of controversy and the state
of his health made him unwilling to undertake--by laughingly calling him
'my general agent!' while Huxley himself in replying to the critics,
declared that he was 'Darwin's bulldog.'

Although, at first, Darwin was able to enumerate less than a dozen
naturalists who were prepared to accept his views, while influential
leaders of thought in science--like Richard Owen in this country and
Louis Agassiz in America--were bitterly opposed to them, the theory
gradually obtained supporters especially among the younger cultivators
of botany, zoology and geology.

It is evident that Darwin for some time regarded his 'abstract,' as he
called the _Origin of Species_, as only a temporary expedient--one to be
superseded by the publication of the much more extended work, designed
and commenced long before. Although the _Origin_ was only published late
in November 1859, and he was called upon immediately to prepare a
second edition, we find that on January 1st, 1860, Darwin began to
arrange his materials for dealing with the first great division of his
subject, 'the variation of animals and plants under domestication.' So
numerous and important were his notes and records of experiments,
however, that he soon found that to expand the whole of the 'abstract,'
on the same scale, would be an impossible task for any one man, however
able and diligent. Unwilling that the results of some of his spe