With respect to what you say about the colonising of New Zealand, I somewhere have an account of a frog frozen in the ice of a Swiss glacier, and which revived when thawed.  I may add that there is an Indian toad which can resist salt water and haunts the seaside.  Nothing ever astonished me more than the case of the Galaxias; but it does not seem known whether it may not be a migratory fish like the salmon.  It seems to me that you complicate rather too much the successive colonisations with New Zealand.  I should prefer believing that the Galaxias was a species, like the Emys of the Sewalik Hills, which has long retained the same form.  Your remarks on the insects and flowers of New Zealand have greatly interested me; but aromatic leaves I have always looked at as a protection against their being eaten by insects or other animals; and as insects are there rare, such protection would not be much needed.  I have written more than I intended, and I must again say how profoundly your book has interested me.

Now let me turn to a very different subject.  I have only just heard of and procured your two articles in the Academy.  I thank you most cordially for your generous defence of me against Mr. Mivart.  In the “Origin” I did not discuss the derivation of any one species; but that I might not be accused of concealing my opinion I went out of my way and inserted a sentence which seemed to me (and still so seems) to declare plainly my belief.  This was quoted in my “Descent of Man.”  Therefore it is very unjust, not to say dishonest, of Mr. Mivart to accuse me of base fraudulent concealment; I care little about myself; but Mr. Mivart, in an article in the Quarterly Review (which I know was written by him), accused my son George of encouraging profligacy, and this without the least foundation.[106] I can assert this positively, as I laid George’s article and the Quarterly Review before Hooker, Huxley and others, and all agreed that the accusation was a deliberate falsification.  Huxley wrote to him on the subject and has almost or quite cut him in consequence; and so would Hooker, but he was advised not to do so as President of the Royal Society.  Well, he has gained his object in giving me pain, and, good God, to think of the flattering, almost fawning speeches which he has made to me!  I wrote, of course, to him to say that I would never speak to him again.  I ought, however, to be contented, as he is the one man who has ever, as far as I know, treated me basely.

Forgive me for writing at such length, and believe me yours very sincerely,

CH.  DARWIN.

P.S.—­I am very sorry that you have given up sexual selection.  I am not at all shaken, and stick to my colours like a true Briton.  When I think about the unadorned head of the Argus pheasant, I might exclaim, Et tu, Brute!

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Down, Beckenham.  June 25, 1876.