, and believes in mutation of species: whether a
convert to us, I do not quite know. We shall live to see all the younger
men converts. My neighbour and an excellent naturalist, J. Lubbock,
is an enthusiastic convert. I see that you are doing great work in the
Archipelago; and most heartily do I sympathise with you. For God's sake
take care of your health. There have been few such noble labourers in
the cause of Natural Science as you are.

P.S. You cannot tell how I admire your spirit, in the manner in which
you have taken all that was done about publishing all our papers. I
had actually written a letter to you, stating that I would not publish
anything before you had published. I had not sent that letter to the
post when I received one from Lyell and Hooker, urging me to send some
MS. to them, and allow them to act as they thought fair and honestly to
both of us; and I did so.

(71/5. The following is the passage from the Introduction to the "Origin
of Species," referred to in the first paragraph of the above letter.)

"My work is now nearly finished; but as it will take me two or three
years more to complete it, and as my health is far from strong, I have
been urged to publish this Abstract. I have more especially been induced
to do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the Natural History of
the Malay Archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general
conclusions that I have on the origin of species. Last year he sent to
me a memoir on this subject, with a request that I would forward it
to Sir Charles Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is
published in the third volume of the Journal of that Society. Sir C.
Lyell and Dr. Hooker, who both knew of my work--the latter having read
my sketch of 1844--honoured me by thinking it advisable to publish,
with Mr. Wallace's excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my
manuscripts."

LETTER 72. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 3rd, 1859.

With respect to reversion, I have been raking up vague recollections of
vague facts; and the impression on my mind is rather more in favour of
reversion than it was when you were here.

In my abstract (72/1. "The Origin of Species.") I give only a paragraph
on the general case of reversion, though I enter in detail on some cases
of reversion of a special character. I have not as yet put all my facts
on this subject in mass, so can come to no definite conclusion. But as
single characters may revert, I must say that