On inside of leaf of Dionæa see the copious glands for secreting gastric juice.
... I do not wonder at your book[71] being taken up at once, by the great numbers of people who need and understand it, and the thousands who jump at anything written by so notorious a writer as you are. The “Origin” will sell anything; and I believe people will get more for their money in this book than in even that, if they care for facts, which generally they do not.
May 25.
I want to write you a long letter, but the time is not to be had now. Many thanks for yours of May 8.
My notice of your book in the “Nation” was not intended to have anything in it, except for the groundlings; was only to make the book known and understood, a light affair.
My preface was written at the publishers’ request simply because yours had not come. The fellows put in both. The edition is not very nicely printed. Judging from the newspaper notices I think the book is taking famously. That agricultural newspaper is taken by the hundred thousand in the country. As to close of my article, to match close of your book,—you see plainly I was put on the defense by your reference to an old hazardous remark of mine. I found your stone-house argument unanswerable in substance (for the notion of design must after all rest mostly on faith, and on accumulation of adaptations, etc.); so all I could do was to find a vulnerable spot in the shaping of it, fire my little shot, and run away in the smoke.
Of course I understand your argument perfectly, and feel the weight of it.
We were intensely amused at the Edinburgh man, who suggests that I could easily smash you into little pieces! I wish he may live to see it done!
I am half dead with drudgery, half of it at least for other people; see no relief but to break up, and run over, with wife, who needs a change, to your side of the water for a good long while.
TO R. W. CHURCH.