doing this for as long time as he thinks necessary.  I do not suppose, for example, that people will say I originated the theory of descent by means of natural selection from among fortunate accidents, or even that I was one of its supporters as a means of modification; but if this impression were to prevail, I cannot think I should have much difficulty in removing it.  At any rate no such misapprehension could endure for more than twenty years, during which I continued to address a public who welcomed all I wrote, unless I myself aided and abetted the mistake.  Mr. Darwin wrote many books, but the impression that Darwinism and evolution, or descent with modification, are identical is still nearly as prevalent as it was soon after the appearance of the “Origin of Species;” the reason of this is, that Mr. Darwin was at no pains to correct us.  Where, in any one of his many later books, is there a passage which sets the matter in its true light, and enters a protest against the misconception of which Professor Ray Lankester complains so bitterly?  The only inference from this is, that Mr. Darwin was not displeased at our thinking him to be the originator of the theory of descent with modification, and did not want us to know more about Lamarck than he could help.  If we wanted to know about him, we must find out what he had said for ourselves, it was no part of Mr. Darwin’s business to tell us; he had no interest in our catching the distinctive difference between himself and that writer; perhaps not; but this approaches closely to wishing us to misunderstand it.  When Mr. Darwin wished us to understand this or that, no one knew better how to show it to us.

We were aware, on reading the “Origin of Species,” that there was a something about it of which we had not full hold; nevertheless we gave Mr. Darwin our confidence at once, partly because he led off by telling us that we must trust him to a great extent, and explained that the present book was only an instalment of a larger work which, when it came out, would make everything perfectly clear; partly, again, because the case for descent with modification, which was the leading idea throughout the book, was so obviously strong, but perhaps mainly because every one said Mr. Darwin was so good, and so much less self-heeding than other people; besides, he had so “patiently” and “carefully” accumulated “such a vast store of facts” as no other naturalist, living or dead, had ever yet even tried to get together; he was so kind to us with his, “May we not believe?” and his “Have we any right to infer that the Creator?” &c.  “Of course we have not,” we exclaimed, almost with tears in our eyes—­ “not if you ask us in that way.”  Now that we understand what it was that puzzled us in Mr. Darwin’s work we do not think highly either of the chief offender, or of the accessories after the fact, many of whom are trying to brazen the matter out, and on a smaller scale to follow his example.