I had materials for a whole chapter
on the subject, and I ought to have made the discussion longer; for it
is clear that I failed to impress my readers; and he who succeeds in
doing so deserves, in my opinion, all the credit.

This leads me to remark that I have almost always been treated honestly
by my reviewers, passing over those without scientific knowledge as
not worthy of notice. My views have often been grossly misrepresented,
bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this has been generally done, as I
believe, in good faith. On the whole I do not doubt that my works have
been over and over again greatly overpraised. I rejoice that I have
avoided controversies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago,
in reference to my geological works, strongly advised me never to get
entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good and caused a
miserable loss of time and temper.

Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that my work has
been imperfect, and when I have been contemptuously criticised, and even
when I have been overpraised, so that I have felt mortified, it has
been my greatest comfort to say hundreds of times to myself that "I
have worked as hard and as well as I could, and no man can do more
than this." I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Tierra del Fuego,
thinking (and, I believe, that I wrote home to the effect) that I could
not employ my life better than in adding a little to Natural Science.
This I have done to the best of my abilities, and critics may say what
they like, but they cannot destroy this conviction.

During the two last months of 1859 I was fully occupied in preparing a
second edition of the 'Origin,' and by an enormous correspondence.
On January 1st, 1860, I began arranging my notes for my work on the
'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication;' but it was not
published until the beginning of 1868; the delay having been caused
partly by frequent illnesses, one of which lasted seven months, and
partly by being tempted to publish on other subjects which at the time
interested me more.

On May 15th, 1862, my little book on the 'Fertilisation of Orchids,'
which cost me ten months' work, was published: most of the facts had
been slowly accumulated during several previous years. During the summer
of 1839, and, I believe, during the previous summer, I was led to attend
to the cross-fertilisation of flowers by the aid of insects, from having
come to the conclusion in my