ding Wallace's paper
at the Linnean Society on July 1st, 1858, at the same time giving
extracts from Darwin's memoir written in 1844, and the abstract of a
letter written by Darwin in 1857 to the distinguished American botanist,
Asa Gray. This solution of the difficulty happily met with the complete
approval of Wallace; and, as the result of the episode, Darwin came to
the conclusion that it would not be wise to defer full publication of
his views, until the extensive work on which he was engaged could be
finished, but an 'abstract' of them must be prepared and issued with as
little delay as possible.

For a time there was hesitation, as Darwin's correspondence with Lyell
and Hooker shows, between the two plans of sending this 'abstract' to
the Linnean Society in a series of papers or of making it an independent
book. But Darwin entertained an invincible dislike to submitting his
various conclusions to the judgment of the Council of a Society, and, in
the end, the preparation of the 'Abstract' in the form of a book of
moderate size, was decided on. This was the origin of Darwin's great
work.

The sickness at Down had led to the abandonment of the house for a time,
and, three weeks after the reading of the joint paper at the Linnean
Society, we find Darwin temporarily established at Sandown, in the Isle
of Wight, where the writing of the _Origin of Species_ was commenced.
The work was resumed in September when the family returned to Down, and
from that time was pressed forward with the greatest diligence.

For the first half of the book, the task before Darwin was to condense,
into less than one half their dimensions, the chapters he had already
written for the large work as originally projected. But for the second
half of the book, he had to expand directly from the essay of 1844.

So closely did Darwin apply himself to the work, that, by the end of
March 28th, 1859, he was able to write to Lyell telling him that he
hoped to be ready to go to press early in May, and asking advice about
publication: he says, 'My Abstract will be about five hundred pages of
the size of your first edition of the _Elements of Geology_.' Lyell
introduced Darwin to John Murray, who had issued all his own works, and
the present representative of that publishing firm has placed on record
a very interesting account of the ever thoughtful and considerate
relations between Darwin and his publishers, which were maintained to
the end[132].

Th