Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of it. He says it is poor—very poor!! (entre nous). The fact [is] he is very much annoyed by it, ... and I do not wonder at it. To bring all ideal systems within the domain of science, and give good physical or natural explanations of all his capital points, is as bad as to have Forbes take the glacier materials ... and give scientific explanation of all the phenomena.
Tell Darwin all this. I will write to him when I get a chance. As I have promised, he and you shall have fair-play here.... I must myself write a review[188] of Darwin's book for Silliman's Journal (the more so that I suspect Agassiz means to come out upon it) for the next (March) number, and I am now setting about it (when I ought to be every moment working the Expl[oring] Expedition Compositæ, which I know far more about). And really it is no easy job as you may well imagine.
I doubt if I shall please you altogether. I know I shall not please Agassiz at all. I hear another reprint is in the Press, and the book will excite much attention here, and some controversy....
C. D. to Asa Gray. Down, January 28th [1860].
My dear Gray,—Hooker has forwarded to me your letter to him; and I cannot express how deeply it has gratified me. To receive the approval of a man whom one has long sincerely respected, and whose judgment and knowledge are most universally admitted, is the highest reward an author can possibly wish for; and I thank you heartily for your most kind expressions.
I have been absent from home for a few days, and so could not earlier answer your letter to me of the 10th of January. You have been extremely kind to take so much trouble and interest about the edition. It has been a mistake of my publisher not thinking of sending over the sheets. I had entirely and utterly forgotten your offer of receiving the sheets as printed off. But I must not blame my publisher, for had I remembered your most kind offer I feel pretty sure I should not have taken advantage of it; for I never dreamed of my book being so successful with general readers: I believe I should have laughed at the idea of sending the sheets to America.[189]
After much consideration, and on the strong advice of Lyell and others, I have resolved to leave the present book as it is (excepting correcting errors, or here and there inserting short sentences), and to use all my strength, which is but little, to bring out the first part (forming a separate volume, with index, &c.) of the three volumes which will make my bigger work; so that I am very unwilling to take up time in making corrections for an American edition. I enclose a list of a few corrections in the second reprint, which you will have received by this time complete, and I could send four or five corrections or additions of equally small importance, or rather of equal brevity. I also intend to write a short preface with a brief history of the subject. These I will set about, as they must some day be done, and I will send them to you in a short time—the few corrections first, and the preface afterwards, unless I hear that you have given up all idea of a separate edition. You will then be able to judge whether it is worth having the new edition with your review prefixed. Whatever be the nature of your review, I assure you I should feel it a great honour to have my book thus preceded....
C. D. to C. Lyell. Down [February 15th, 1860].
... I am perfectly convinced (having read it this morning) that the review in the Annals[190] is by Wollaston; no one else in the world would have used so many parentheses. I have written to him, and told him that the "pestilent" fellow thanks him for his kind manner of speaking about him. I have also told him that he would be pleased to hear that the Bishop of Oxford says it is the most unphilosophical[191] work he ever read. The review seems to me clever, and only misinterprets me in a few places. Like all hostile men, he passes over the explanation given of Classification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs, &c. I read Wallace's paper in MS.,[192] and thought it admirably good; he does not know that he has been anticipated about the depth of intervening sea determining distribution.... The most curious point in the paper seems to me that about the African character of the Celebes productions, but I should require further confirmation....
Henslow is staying here; I have had some talk with him; he is in much the same state as Bunbury,[193] and will go a very little way with us, but brings up no real argument against going further. He also shudders at the eye! It is really curious (and perhaps is an argument in our favour) how differently different opposers view the subject. Henslow used to rest his opposition on the imperfection of the Geological Record, but he now thinks nothing of this, and says I have got well out of it; I wish I could quite agree with him. Baden Powell says he never read anything so conclusive as my statement about the eye!! A stranger writes to me about sexual selection, and regrets that I boggle about such a trifle as the brush of hair on the male turkey, and so on. As L. Jenyns has a really philosophical mind, and as you say you like to see everything, I send an old letter of his. In a later letter to Henslow, which I have seen, he is more candid than any opposer I have heard of, for he says, though he cannot go so far as I do, yet he can give no good reason why he should not. It is funny how each man draws his own imaginary line at which to halt. It reminds me so vividly [of] what I was told[194] about you when I first commenced geology—to believe a little, but on no account to believe all.