-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Geologists. | Zoologists and | Physiologists. |Botanists. | Palæontologists. | | ------------------|------------------|------------------|----------------- Lyell. |Huxley. |Carpenter. |Hooker. Ramsay.[196] |J. Lubbock. |Sir. H. Holland |H. C. Watson. Jukes.[197] |L. Jenyns |(to large extent).|Asa Gray H. D. Rogers.[198]|(to large extent).| |(to some extent). |Searles Wood.[199]| |Dr. Boott | |(to large extent). | |Thwaites.[200] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
_C. D. to Asa Gray_. Down, April 3 [1860].
... I remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, and now small trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!...
You may like to hear about reviews on my book. Sedgwick (as I and Lyell feel _certain_ from internal evidence) has reviewed me savagely and unfairly in the _Spectator_.[201] The notice includes much abuse, and is hardly fair in several respects. He would actually lead any one, who was ignorant of geology, to suppose that I had invented the great gaps between successive geological formations, instead of its being an almost universally admitted dogma. But my dear old friend Sedgwick, with his noble heart, is old, and is rabid with indignation.... There has been one prodigy of a review, namely, an _opposed_ one (by Pictet,[202] the palæontologist, in the _Bib. Universelle_ of Geneva) which is _perfectly_ fair and just, and I agree to every word he says; our only difference being that he attaches less weight to arguments in favour, and more to arguments opposed, than I do. Of all the opposed reviews, I think this the only quite fair one, and I never expected to see one. Please observe that I do not class your review by any means as opposed, though you think so yourself! It has done me _much_ too good service ever to appear in that rank in my eyes. But I fear I shall weary you with so much about my book. I should rather think there was a good chance of my becoming the most egotistical man in all Europe! What a proud pre-eminence! Well, you have helped to make me so, and therefore you must forgive me if you can.