able.

But oh! what work there is before we shall understand the genealogy of
organic beings!

With respect to the Apteryx, I know not enough of anatomy; but ask Dr.
F. whether the clavicle, etc., do not give attachment to some of the
muscles of respiration. If my views are at all correct, the wing of the
Apteryx (113/3. "Origin of Species," Edition VI., page 140.) cannot be
(page 452 of the "Origin") a nascent organ, as these wings are useless.
I dare not trust to memory, but I know I found the whole sternum always
reduced in size in all the fancy and confined pigeons relatively to the
same bones in the wild Rock-pigeon: the keel was generally still further
reduced relatively to the reduced length of the sternum; but in some
breeds it was in a most anomalous manner more prominent. I have got a
lot of facts on the reduction of the organs of flight in the pigeon,
which took me weeks to work out, and which Huxley thought curious.

I am utterly ashamed, and groan over my handwriting. It was "Natural
Preservation." Natural persecution is what the author ought to suffer.
It rejoices me that you do not object to the term. Hooker made the same
remark that it ought to have been "Variation and Natural Selection."
Yet with domestic productions, when selection is spoken of, variation is
always implied. But I entirely agree with your and Hooker's remark.

Have you begun regularly to write your book on the antiquity of man?
(113/4. Published in 1863.)

I do NOT agree with your remark that I make Natural Selection do too
much work. You will perhaps reply that every man rides his hobby-horse
to death; and that I am in the galloping state.

LETTER 114. TO C. LYELL. 15, Marine Parade, Eastbourne, Friday 5th
[October, 1860].

I have two notes to thank you for, and I return Wollaston. It has always
seemed to me rather strange that Forbes, Wollaston and Co. should argue,
from the presence of allied, and not identical species in islands, for
the former continuity of land.

They argue, I suppose, from the species being allied in different
regions of the same continent, though specifically distinct. But I think
one might on the creative doctrine argue with equal force in a directly
reverse manner, and say that, as species are so often markedly distinct,
yet allied, on islands, all our continents existed as islands first, and
their inhabitants were first created on these islands, and since became
mingled together, so as not to be so