My request will not cost you much trouble--i.e.to read two pages, for I know that you can decide at once.

I heartily enjoyed my talk with you on Sunday morning.
P.S .-- If my manuscript appears too flat, too contemptuous, too spiteful, or too anything, I earnestly beseech you to throw it into the fire.
LETTER 301.

CHARLES DARWIN TO THE EDITOR OF "NATURE." (301/1.

"Nature," November 11th, 1880, page 32.) Down, November 5th, 1880.
Sir Wyville Thomson and Natural Selection.
I am sorry to find that Sir Wyville Thomson does not understand the principle of Natural Selection, as explained by Mr.Wallace and myself.
If he had done so, he could not have written the following sentence in the Introduction to the Voyage of the "Challenger": "The character of the abyssal fauna refuses to give the least support to the theory which refers the evolution of species to extreme variation guided only by Natural Selection." This is a standard of criticism not uncommonly reached by theologians and metaphysicians, when they write on scientific subjects, but is something new as coming from a naturalist.

Professor Huxley demurs to it in the last number of "Nature"; but he does not touch on the expression of extreme variation, nor on that of evolution being guided only by Natural Selection.