You speak of species not having any material base to rest on, but is this any greater hardship than deciding what deserves to be called a variety, and be designated by a Greek letter? When I was at systematic work I know I longed to have no other difficulty (great enough) than deciding whether the form was distinct enough to deserve a name, and not to be haunted with undefined and unanswerable questions whether it was a true species. What a jump it is from a well-marked variety, produced by natural cause, to a species produced by the separate act of the hand of God! But I am running on foolishly. By the way, I met the other day Phillips, the palæontologist, and he asked me, 'How do you define a species?' I answered, 'I can not.' Whereupon he said, 'At last I have found out the only true definition any form which has ever had a specific name!. . . '
| To Asa Gray. |
| Down, June 8th [1860]. |
I have to thank you for two notes, one through Hooker, and one with some letters to be posted, which was done. I anticipated your request by making a few remarks on Owen's review. Hooker is so weary of reviews that I do not think you will get any hints from him. I have lately had many more 'kicks than halfpence.' A review in the last Dublin Nat. Hist. Review is the most unfair thing which has appeared,—one mass of misrepresentation. It is evidently by Haughton, the geologist, chemist and mathematician. It shows immeasurable conceit and contempt of all who are not mathematicians. He discusses bees' cells, and puts a series which I have never alluded to, and wholly ignores the intermediate comb of Melipona, which alone led me to my notions. The article is a curiosity of unfairness and arrogance; but, as he sneers at Malthus, I am content, for it is clear he can not reason. He is a friend of Harvey, with whom I have had some correspondence. Your article has clearly, as he admits, influenced him. He admits to a certain extent Natural Selection, yet I am sure does not understand me. It is strange that very few do, and I am become quite convinced that I must be an extremely bad explainer. To recur for a moment to Owen: he grossly misrepresents and is very unfair to Huxley. You say that you think the article must be by a pupil of Owen; but no one fact tells so strongly against Owen, considering his former position at the College of Surgeons, as that he has never reared one pupil or follower. In the number just out of Fraser's Magazine there is an article or review on Lamarck and me by W. Hopkins, the mathematician, who, like Haughton, despises the reasoning power of all naturalists. Personally he is extremely kind towards me; but he evidently in the following number means to blow
