y accident; and this I cannot
believe. That observations of the above nature may easily be altogether
wrong is well shown by Dr. B. having declared to Huxley that he had
watched the entire development of a leaf of Sphagnum. He must have
worked with very impure materials in some cases, as plenty of organisms
appeared in a saline solution not containing an atom of nitrogen.

I wholly disagree with Dr. B. about many points in his latter chapters.
Thus the frequency of generalised forms in the older strata seems to me
clearly to indicate the common descent with divergence of more recent
forms.

Notwithstanding all his sneers, I do not strike my colours as yet about
pangenesis. I should like to live to see archebiosis proved true, for it
would be a discovery of transcendent importance; or if false I should
like to see it disproved, and the facts otherwise explained; but I shall
not live to see all this. If ever proved, Dr. B. will have taken a
prominent part in the work. How grand is the onward rush of science; it
is enough to console us for the many errors which we have committed and
for our efforts being overlaid and forgotten in the mass of new facts
and new views which are daily turning up.

This is all I have to say about Dr. B.'s book, and it certainly has not
been worth saying. Nevertheless, reward me whenever you can by giving me
any news about your appointment to the Bethnal Green Museum.--My dear
Wallace, yours very sincerely,

CH. DARWIN.

* * * * *

_The Dell, Grays, Essex. August 31, 1872._

Dear Darwin,--Many thanks for your long and interesting letter about
Bastian's book, though I almost regret that my asking you for your
opinion should have led you to give yourself so much trouble. I quite
understand your frame of mind, and think it quite a natural and proper
one. You had hard work to hammer your views into people's heads at
first, and if Bastian's theory is true he will have still harder work,
because the facts he appeals to are themselves so difficult to
establish. Are not you mistaken about the Sphagnum? As I remember it,
Huxley detected a fragment of Sphagnum leaf _in the same solution in
which a fungoid growth had been developed_. Bastian mistook the Sphagnum
also for a vegetable growth, and on account of this ignorance of the
character of Sphagnum, and its presence in the solution, Huxley rejected
somewhat contemptuously (and I think very illogically) all Bastian'