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of the Popular Science Review and the translator of Dr. Krause's article for Mr. Darwin are one and the same person, it is likely the Popular Science Review is well informed in saying that my book appeared before Dr. Krause's article had been transformed into its present shape, and that my book was intended by the passage in question.

Unable to see any way of escaping from a conclusion which I could not willingly adopt, I thought it best to write to Mr. Darwin, stating the facts as they appeared to myself, and asking an explanation, which I would have gladly strained a good many points to have accepted. It is better, perhaps, that I should give my letter and Mr. Darwin's answer in full. My letter ran thus:

"CHARLES DARWIN, Esq., F.R.S., &c.

"January 2, 1880.

"DEAR SIR,-Will you kindly refer me to the edition of Kosmos which contains the text of Dr. Krause's article on Dr. Erasmus Darwin, as translated by Mr. W. S. Dallas ?

"I have before me the last February number of Kosmos, which appears by your preface to be the one from which Mr. Dallas has translated, but his translation contains long and important passages which are not in the February number of Kosmos, while many passages in the original are omitted in the translation.

"Among the passages introduced are the last six pages of the English article, which seem to condemn by anticipation the position I have taken as regards Dr. Erasmus Darwin in

my book,' Evolution, Old and New,' and which I believe I was the first to take. The concluding, and therefore, perhaps, most prominent sentence of the translation you have given to the public stands thus :

"Erasmus Darwin's system was in itself a most significant first step in the path of knowledge his grandson has opened up for us, but to wish to revive it at the present day, as has actually been seriously attempted, shows a weakness of thought and a mental anachronism which no man can envy.'

"The Kosmos which has been sent me from Germany contains no such passage.

"As you have stated in your preface that my book. Evolution, Old and New,' appeared subsequently to Dr, Krause's article, and as no intimation is given that the article has been altered and added to since its original appearance, while the accuracy of the translation as though from the February number of Kosmos is, as you expressly say, guaranteed by Mr. Dallas's 'scientific reputation together with his knowledge of German,' your readers will naturally suppose that all they read in the translation. appeared in February last, and therefore before 'Evolution, Old and New,' was written, and therefore independently of, and necessarily without reference to, that book.

"I do not doubt that this was actually the case, but have failed to obtain the edition which contains the passage above referred to, and several others which appear in the translation.

"I have a personal interest in this matter, and venture, therefore, to ask for the explanation, which I do not doubt you will readily give me.-Yours faithfully, S. BUTLER."

The following is Mr. Darwin's answer :

"January 3, 1880.

"MY DEAR SIR,-Dr. Krause, soon after the appearance of his article in Kosmos, told me that he intended to publish it separately and to alter it considerably, and the altered MS.

was sent to Mr. Dallas for translation. This is so common a practice that it never occurred to me to state that the article had been modified; but now I much regret that I did not do so. The original will soon appear in German, and I believe will be a much larger book than the English one; for, with Dr. Krause's consent, many long extracts from Miss Seward were omitted (as well as much other matter), from being in my opinion superfluous for the English reader. I believe that the omitted parts will appear as notes in the German edition. Should there be a reprint of the English Life, I will state that the original as it appeared in Kosmos was modified by Dr. Krause before it was translated. I may add that I had obtained Dr. Krause's consent for a translation, and had arranged with Mr. Dallas before your book was announced. I remember this because Mr. Dallas wrote to tell me of the advertisement. I remain, yours faithfully, C. DARWIN."

This was not a letter I could accept. If Mr. Darwin had said that by some inadvertence, which he was unable to excuse or account for, a blunder had been made which he would at once correct so far as was in his power by a letter to the Times or the Athenæum, and that a notice of the erratum should be printed on a flyleaf and pasted into all unsold copies of the “Life of Erasmus Darwin," there would have been no more heard about the matter from me; but when Mr. Darwin maintained that it was a common practice to take advantage of an opportunity of revising a work to interpolate a covert attack upon an opponent, and at the

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same time to misdate the interpolated matter by expressly stating that it appeared months sooner than it actually did, and prior to the work which it attacked; when he maintained that what was being done was so common a practice that it never occurred" to him-the writer of some twenty volumes-to do what all literary men must know to be inexorably requisite, I thought this was going far beyond what was permissible in honourable warfare, and that it was time, in the interests of literary and scientific morality, even more than in my own, to appeal to public opinion. I was particularly struck with the use of the words "it never occurred to me," and felt how completely of a piece it was with the opening paragraph of the

Origin of Species." It was not merely that it did not occur to Mr. Darwin to state that the article had been modified since it was written. -this would have been bad enough under the circumstances but that it did occur to

true.

him to go out of his way to say what was not There was no necessity for him to have said anything about my book. It appeared, moreover, inadequate to tell me that if a reprint of the English Life was wanted (which might or might not be the case, and if it was not the case, why, a shrug of the shoulders,

and I must make the best of it), Mr. Darwin, might perhaps silently omit his note about my book, as he omitted his misrepresentation of the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," and put the words "revised and corrected by the author" on his title-page.

No matter how high a writer may stand, nor what services he may have unquestionably rendered, it cannot be for the general wellbeing that he should be allowed to set aside the fundamental principles of straightforwardness and fair play. When I thought of Buffon, of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, of Lamarck, and even of the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," to all of whom Mr. Darwin had dealt the same measure which he was now dealing to myself; when I thought of these great men, now dumb, who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and whose laurels had been filched from them; of the manner, too, in which Mr. Darwin had been abetted by those who should have been the first to detect the fallacy which had misled him; of the hotbed of intrigue which science has now become; of the disrepute into which we English must fall as a nation if such practices as Mr. Darwin had attempted in this case were to be tolerated;-when I thought of all this, I felt that though prayers for the repose

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