int
out the weak places in his own armour, and even sometimes, it appears
to me, to make admissions against himself which are quite unnecessary.
A critic who desires to attack Mr. Darwin has only to read his works
with a desire to observe, not their merits, but their defects, and
he will find, ready to hand, more adverse suggestions than are likely
ever to have suggested themselves to his own sharpness, without Mr.
Darwin's self-denying aid.

Now this quality of scientific candour is not so common that it needs
to be discouraged; and it appears to me to deserve other treatment
than that adopted by the Quarterly Reviewer, who deals with Mr. Darwin
as an Old Bailey barrister deals with a man against whom he wishes
to obtain a conviction, _per fas aut nefas_, and opens his case by
endeavouring to create a prejudice against the prisoner in the minds
of the jury. In his eagerness to carry out this laudable design, the
Quarterly Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine
of natural selection without an oblique and entirely unjustifiable
attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To Mr. Darwin," says he, "and
(through Mr. Wallace's reticence) to Mr. Darwin alone, is due the
credit of having first brought it prominently forward and demonstrated
its truth." No one can less desire than I do, to throw a doubt upon
Mr. Wallace's originality, or to question his claim to the honour of
being one of the originators of the doctrine of natural selection; but
the statement that Mr. Darwin has the sole credit of originating the
doctrine because of Mr. Wallace's reticence is simply ridiculous. The
proof of this is, in the first place, afforded by Mr. Wallace himself,
whose noble freedom from petty jealousy in this matter, smaller folk
would do well to imitate; and who writes thus:--"I have felt all my
life, and I still feel, the most sincere satisfaction that Mr. Darwin
had been at work long before me, and that it was not left for me to
attempt to write the 'Origin of Species.' I have long since measured
my own strength, and know well that it would be quite unequal to that
task." So that if there was any reticence at all in the matter, it
was Mr. Darwin's reticence during the long twenty years of study which
intervened between the conception and the publication of his theory,
which gave Mr. Wallace the chance of being an independent discoverer
of the importance of natural selection. And, finally, if it be
recollected that Mr. Darwin's