utterflies as well as with female birds. I have a
good many facts which make me believe in sexual selection as applied to
man, but whether I shall convince anyone else is very doubtful.--Dear
Wallace, yours very sincerely,

CH. DARWIN.

* * * * *

LETTER VIII

C. DARWIN TO A.R. WALLACE

_Down, Bromley, Kent. May 18, 1860._

My dear Mr. Wallace,--I received this morning your letter from Amboyna
dated Feb. 16th, containing some remarks and your too high approbation
of my book. Your letter has pleased me very much, and I most completely
agree with you on the parts which are strongest and which are weakest.
The imperfection of the geological record is, as you say, the weakest of
all; but yet I am pleased to find that there are almost more geological
converts than of pursuers of other branches of natural science. I may
mention Lyell, Ramsay, Jukes, Rogers, Keyerling, all good men and true.
Pictet of Geneva is not a convert, but is evidently staggered (as I
think is Bronn of Heidelberg), and he has written a perfectly fair
review in the _Bib. Universelle_ of Geneva. Old Bronn has translated my
book, well done also into German, and his well-known name will give it
circulation. I think geologists are more converted than simple
naturalists because more accustomed to reasoning.

Before telling you about the progress of opinion on the subject, you
must let me say how I admire the generous manner in which you speak of
my book: most persons would in your position have felt bitter envy and
jealousy. How nobly free you seem to be of this common failing of
mankind. But you speak far too modestly of yourself; you would, if you
had had my leisure, have done the work just as well, perhaps better,
than I have done it. Talking of envy, you never read anything more
envious and spiteful (with numerous misrepresentations) than Owen is in
the _Edinburgh Review_. I must give one instance; he throws doubts and
sneers at my saying that the ovigerous frena of cirripedes have been
converted into branchiae, because I have not found them to be branchiae;
whereas _he himself_ admits, before I wrote on cirripedes, without the
least hesitation, that their organs are branchiae. The attacks have been
heavy and incessant of late. Sedgwick and Prof. Clarke attacked me
savagely at the Cambridge Philosophical Society, but Henslow defended me
well, though not a convert. Phillips has since attacked me in a lecture
at Cam