, necessitating a special quest
of wood-boring larvae by small quadrupeds of the Lemurine or Sciurine
types of organisation.') paper (I think) that he sneers at the manner in
which he supposes that we should account for the structure of its
limbs; and asks how we know that certain insects had increased in the
Madagascar forests. Would it not be a good rebuff to ask him how he
knows there were trees at all on the leafless plains of La Plata for his
Mylodons to tear down? But I must stop, for if I once begin about [him]
there will be no end. I was disappointed in the part about species in
Lyell. (170/4. Lyell's "Antiquity of Man." See "Life and Letters," III.,
page 11.) You and Hooker are the only two bold men. I have had a bad
spring and summer, almost constantly very unwell; but I am crawling on
in my book on "Variation under Domestication.")

LETTER 171. TO C. LYELL. Down, August 14th [1863].

Have you seen Bentham's remarks on species in his address to the Linnean
Society? (171/1. Presidential address before the Linnean Society by G.
Bentham ("Journ. Proc. Linn. Soc." Volume VII., page xi., 1864).) they
have pleased me more than anything I have read for some time. I have no
news, for I have not seen a soul for months, and have had a bad
spring and summer, but have managed to do a good deal of work. Emma is
threatening me to take me to Malvern, and perhaps I shall be compelled,
but it is a horrid waste of time; you must have enjoyed North Wales, I
should think, it is to me a most glorious country...

If you have not read Bates' book (171/2. Henry Walter Bates, "The
Naturalist on the River Amazons," 2 volumes, London, 1863. In a letter
to Bates, April 18th, 1863, Darwin writes, "It is the best work of
natural history travels ever published in England" ("Life and Letters,"
II., page 381.), I think it would interest you. He is second only to
Humboldt in describing a tropical forest. (171/3. Quoted in "Life and
Letters," II., page 381.). Talking of reading, I have never got the
"Edinburgh" (171/4. The "Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of
Man," by Sir Charles Lyell, and works by other authors reviewed in the
"Edinburgh Review." Volume CXVIII., July 1863. The writer sums up his
criticism as follows: "Glancing at the work of Sir Charles Lyell as a
whole, it leaves the impression on our minds that we have been reading
an ingenious academical thesis, rather than a work of demonstration by
an original writer...There is n