embryo and the adult animal, and of the close resemblance of
the embryos within the same class. No notice of this point was taken, as
far as I remember, in the early reviews of the _Origin_, and I recollect
expressing my surprise on this head in a letter to Asa Gray. Within late
years several reviewers have given the whole credit to Fritz Mueller and
Haeckel, who undoubtedly have worked it out much more fully and in some
respects more correctly than I did. I had materials for a whole chapter
on the subject, and I ought to have made the discussion longer; for it
is clear that I failed to impress my readers; and he who succeeds in
doing so deserves, in my opinion, all the credit.

This leads me to remark that I have almost without exception been
treated honestly by my reviewers, passing over those without scientific
knowledge as not worthy of notice. My views have often been grossly
misrepresented, bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this has been
generally done, as I believe, in good faith. On the whole I do not doubt
that my works have been repeatedly and greatly overpraised. I rejoice
that I have avoided controversies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many
years ago, in reference to my geological works, strongly advised me
never to get entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good and
caused a miserable loss of time and temper.

Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that my work has
been imperfect, and when I have been contemptuously criticised, and even
when I have been overpraised, so that I have felt mortified, it has been
my greatest comfort to say hundreds of times to myself that "I have
worked as hard and as well as I could, and no man can do more than
this." I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Terra del Fuego, thinking
(and I believe that I wrote home to that effect) that I could not employ
my life better than in adding a little to natural science. This I have
done to the best of my abilities, and critics may say what they like,
but they cannot destroy this conviction.

During the last two months of 1859 I was fully occupied in preparing a
second edition of the _Origin_, and by an enormous correspondence. On
January 1, 1860, I began arranging my notes for my work on the
_Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,_ but it was not
published until the beginning of 1868, the delay having been caused
partly by frequent periods of illness, one of which lasted seven months,
and partly