The following letter refers to Mr. Huxley's lecture: "The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species" (This same "Coming of Age" was the subject of an address from the Council of the Otago Institute. It is given in 'Nature,' February 24, 1881.), given at the Royal Institution, April 9, 1880, published in 'Nature,' and in 'Science and Culture,' page 310:]
CHARLES DARWIN TO T.H. HUXLEY. Abinger Hall, Dorking, Sunday, April 11, 1880.
My dear Huxley,
I wished much to attend your Lecture, but I have had a bad cough, and we have come here to see whether a change would do me good, as it has done. What a magnificent success your lecture seems to have been, as I judge from the reports in the "Standard" and "Daily News", and more especially from the accounts given me by three of my children. I suppose that you have not written out your lecture, so I fear there is no chance of its being printed in extenso. You appear to have piled, as on so many other occasions, honours high and thick on my old head. But I well know how great a part you have played in establishing and spreading the belief in the descent- theory, ever since that grand review in the "Times" and the battle royal at Oxford up to the present day.
Ever my dear Huxley, Yours sincerely and gratefully, CHARLES DARWIN.
P.S.--It was absurdly stupid in me, but I had read the announcement of your Lecture, and thought that you meant the maturity of the subject, until my wife one day remarked, "it is almost twenty-one years since the 'Origin' appeared," and then for the first time the meaning of your words flashed on me!
[In the above-mentioned lecture Mr. Huxley made a strong point of the accumulation of palaeontological evidence which the years between 1859 and 1880 have given us in favour of Evolution. On this subject my father wrote (August 31, 1880):]
My dear Professor Marsh,
I received some time ago your very kind note of July 28th, and yesterday the magnificent volume. (Odontornithes. A Monograph on the extinct Toothed Birds of North America. 1880. By O.C. Marsh.) I have looked with renewed admiration at the plates, and will soon read the text. Your work on these old birds, and on the many fossil animals of North America has afforded the best support to the theory of Evolution, which has appeared within the last twenty years. (Mr. Huxley has well pointed out ('Science and Culture,' page 317) that: "In 1875, the discovery of the toothed birds of the cretaceous formation in North America, by Prof. Marsh, completed the series of transitional forms between birds and reptiles, and removed Mr. Darwin's proposition that, 'many animal forms of life have been utterly lost, through which the early progenitors of birds were formerly connected with the early progenitors of the other vertebrate classes,' from the region of hypothesis to that of demonstrable fact.") The general appearance of the copy which you have sent me is worthy of its contents, and I can say nothing stronger than this.
With cordial thanks, believe me, Yours very sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN.
[In November, 1880, he received an account of a flood in Brazil, from which his friend Fritz Muller had barely escaped with his life. My father immediately wrote to Hermann Muller anxiously enquiring whether his brother had lost books, instruments, etc., by this accident, and begging in that case "for the sake of science, so that science should not suffer," to be allowed to help in making good the loss. Fortunately, however, the injury to Fritz Muller's possessions was not so great as was expected, and the incident remains only as a memento, which I trust cannot be otherwise than pleasing to the survivor, of the friendship of the two naturalists.
In 'Nature' (November 11, 1880) appeared a letter from my father, which is, I believe, the only instance in which he wrote publicly with anything like severity. The late Sir Wyville Thomson wrote, in the Introduction to the 'Voyage of the "Challenger"': "The character of the abyssal fauna refuses to give the least support to the theory which refers the evolution of species to extreme variation guided only by natural selection." My father, after characterising these remarks as a "standard of criticism, not uncommonly reached by theologians and metaphysicians," goes on to take exception to the term "extreme variation," and challenges Sir Wyville to name any one who has "said that the evolution of species depends only on natural selection." The letter closes with an imaginary scene between Sir Wyville and a breeder, in which Sir Wyville criticises artificial selection in a somewhat similar manner.