I Must Apologise For
So Much Detail, But Hardly Knew How To Explain Myself Without It.
I always delighted in your ORIGIN OF SPECIES as soon as I saw it out
in New Zealand - not as knowing anything whatsoever of natural
history, but it enters into so many deeply interesting questions, or
rather it suggests so many, that it thoroughly fascinated me.
I
therefore feel all the greater pleasure that my pamphlet should
please you, however full of errors.
The first dialogue on the ORIGIN which I wrote in the PRESS called
forth a contemptuous rejoinder from (I believe) the Bishop of
Wellington - (please do not mention the name, though I think that at
this distance of space and time I might mention it to yourself) I
answered it with the enclosed, which may amuse you. I assumed
another character because my dialogue was in my hearing very severely
criticised by two or three whose opinion I thought worth having, and
I deferred to their judgment in my next. I do not think I should do
so now. I fear you will be shocked at an appeal to the periodicals
mentioned in my letter, but they form a very staple article of bush
diet, and we used to get a good deal of superficial knowledge out of
them. I feared to go in too heavy on the side of the ORIGIN, because
I thought that, having said my say as well as I could, I had better
now take a less impassioned tone; but I was really exceedingly angry.
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