"What seems to me the weakest point in the book is the attempt to account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, &c., by natural selection. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian."
[189] In a letter to Mr. Murray, 1860, my father wrote:—"I am amused by Asa Gray's account of the excitement my book has made amongst naturalists in the U. States. Agassiz has denounced it in a newspaper, but yet in such terms that it is in fact a fine advertisement!" This seems to refer to a lecture given before the Mercantile Library Association.
[190] Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist. third series, vol. v. p. 132. My father has obviously taken the expression "pestilent" from the following passage (p. 138): "But who is this Nature, we have a right to ask, who has such tremendous power, and to whose efficiency such marvellous performances are ascribed? What are her image and attributes, when dragged from her wordy lurking-place? Is she ought but a pestilent abstraction, like dust cast in our eyes to obscure the workings of an Intelligent First Cause of all?" The reviewer pays a tribute to my father's candour "so manly and outspoken as almost to 'cover a multitude of sins.'" The parentheses (to which allusion is made above) are so frequent as to give a characteristic appearance to Mr. Wollaston's pages.
[191] Another version of the words is given by Lyell, to whom they were spoken, viz. "the most illogical book ever written."—Life and Letters of Sir C. Lyell, vol. ii. p. 358.
[192] "On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago."—Linn. Soc. Journ. 1860.
[193] The late Sir Charles Bunbury, well known as a Paleo-botanist.
[194] By Professor Henslow.
[195] The translator of the first German edition of the Origin.
[196] Andrew Ramsay, late Director-General of the Geological Survey.
[197] Joseph Beete Jukes, M.A., F.R.S., born 1811, died 1869. He was educated at Cambridge, and from 1842 to 1846 he acted as naturalist to H.M.S. Fly, on an exploring expedition in Australia and New Guinea. He was afterwards appointed Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland. He was the author of many papers, and of more than one good handbook of geology.