I have had an excellent and cautious letter from Mr. Geach of Singapore with some valuable answers on expression, which I owe to you.

I heartily congratulate you on the birth of “Herbert Spencer,” and may he deserve his name, but I hope he will copy his father’s style and not his namesake’s.  Pray observe, though I fear I am a month too late, when tears are first secreted enough to overflow; and write down date.

I have finished Vol.  I. of my book, and I hope the whole will be out by the end of November; if you have the patience to read it through, which is very doubtful, you will find, I think, a large accumulation of facts which will be of service to you in your future papers, and they could not be put to better use, for you certainly are a master in the noble art of reasoning.

Have you changed your house to Westbourne Grove?

Believe me, my dear Wallace, yours very sincerely,

CH.  DARWIN.

This letter is so badly expressed that it is barely intelligible, but I am tired with proofs.

P.S.—­Mr. Warington has lately read an excellent and spirited abstract of the “Origin” before the Victoria Institute, and as this is a most orthodox body he has gained the name of the devil’s advocate.  The discussion which followed during three consecutive meetings is very rich from the nonsense talked.  If you would care to see the number I could lend it you.

I forgot to remark how capitally you turn the table on the Duke, when you make him create the Angraecum and moth by special creation.

* * * * *

Hurstpierpoint.  October 22, 1867.

Dear Darwin,—­I am very glad you approve of my article on “Creation by
Law” as a whole.

The “machine metaphor” is not mine, but the North British reviewer’s.  I merely accept it and show that it is on our side and not against us, but I do not think it at all a good metaphor to be used as an argument either way.  I did not half develop the argument on the limits of variation, being myself limited in space; but I feel satisfied that it is the true answer to the very common and very strong objection, that “variation has strict limits.”  The fallacy is the requiring variation in domesticity to go beyond the limits of the same variation under nature.  It does do so sometimes, however, because the conditions of existence are so different.  I do not think a case can be pointed out in which the limits of variation under domestication are not up to or beyond those already marked out in nature, only we generally get in the species an amount of change which in nature occurs only in the whole range of the genus or family.

The many cases, however, in which variation has gone far beyond nature and has not yet stopped are ignored.  For instance, no wild pomaceous fruit is, I believe, so large as our apples, and no doubt they could be got much larger if flavour, etc., were entirely neglected.