[198] Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. Born in the United States 1809, died 1866.
[199] Searles Valentine Wood, died 1880. Chiefly known for his work on the Mollusca of the Crag.
[200] Dr. G. H. K. Thwaites, F.R.S., was born in 1811, or about that date, and died in Ceylon, September 11, 1882. He began life as a Notary, but his passion for Botany and Entomology ultimately led to his taking to Science as a profession. He became lecturer on Botany at the Bristol School of Medicine, and in 1849 he was appointed Director of the Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, which he made "the most beautiful tropical garden in the world." He is best known through his important discovery of conjugation in the Diatomaceæ (1847). His Enumeratio Plantarum Zeylaniæ (1858-64) was "the first complete account, on modern lines, of any definitely circumscribed tropical area." (From a notice in Nature, October 26, 1882.)
[201] Spectator, March 24, 1860. There were favourable notices of the Origin by Huxley in the Westminster Review, and Carpenter in the Medico-Chir. Review, both in the April numbers.
[202] François Jules Pictet, in the Archives des Science de la Bibliothèque Universelle, Mars 1860.
[203] Edinburgh Review, April, 1860.
[204] April 7, 1860.
[205] My father wrote (Gardeners' Chronicle, April 21, 1860, p. 362): "I have been much interested by Mr. Patrick Matthew's communication in the number of your paper dated April 7th. I freely acknowledge that Mr. Matthew has anticipated by many years the explanation which I have offered of the origin of species, under the name of natural selection. I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, had heard of Mr. Matthew's views, considering how briefly they are given, and that they appeared in the appendix to a work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture. I can do no more than offer my apologies to Mr. Matthew for my entire ignorance of his publication. If another edition of my work is called for, I will insert to the foregoing effect." In spite of my father's recognition of his claims, Mr. Matthew remained unsatisfied, and complained that an article in the Saturday Analyst and Leader, Nov. 24, 1860, was "scarcely fair in alluding to Mr. Darwin as the parent of the origin of species, seeing that I published the whole that Mr. Darwin attempts to prove, more than twenty-nine years ago." It was not until later that he learned that Matthew had also been forestalled. In October 1865, he wrote Sir J. D. Hooker:—"Talking of the Origin, a Yankee has called my attention to a paper attached to Dr. Wells' famous Essay on Dew, which was read in 1813 to the Royal Soc., but not [then] printed, in which he applies most distinctly the principle of Natural Selection to the races of Man. So poor old Patrick Matthew is not the first, and he cannot, or ought not, any longer to put on his title-pages, 'Discoverer of the principle of Natural Selection'!"
[206] This refers to a "savage onslaught" on the Origin by Sedgwick at the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Henslow defended his old pupil, and maintained that "the subject was a legitimate one for investigation."
[207] "The battle rages furiously in the United States. Gray says he was preparing a speech, which would take 1½ hours to deliver, and which he 'fondly hoped would be a stunner.' He is fighting splendidly, and there seem to have been many discussions with Agassiz and others at the meetings. Agassiz pities me much at being so deluded."—From a letter to Hooker, May 30th, 1860.