Notes to Chapter 1

1 William Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function and Transformation, p. 171.

2 Julian Huxley has offered this kind of sequence on several occasions. The dates quoted are as given in his 'The Emergence of Darwinism', Journal of the Linnean Society of London, vol. 44 (July 1958), p. 7. Conceptualisations of the early reactions against Darwinism as 'prejudice versus reason' may have a dated air about them, but they are still current. For instance, the editor of a recent, elaborate reference work permits the extraordinary judgement that Darwin's opponents were 'mainly members of the privileged upper classes who regarded the theory as a threat to the Establishment': Philip P. Wiener (ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas (New York: Scribner's 1973), 'Evolutionism'.

3 Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century, p. 84.

4 Garland E. Allen,'Hugo de Vries and the reception of the"mutation theory"',Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 2 (Spring 1969), p. 57. Allen denies that sentiments such as Dennert's (which he cites) were of any major significance.

5 George John Romanes, Darwin, and after Darwin: An Exposition of the Darwinian Theory and a Discussion of Post-Darwinian Questions, Vol. 2, Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility, pp. 2, 156-7. Romanes's treatment is so extraordinarily thorough that any further evidence on the point at issue would seem to be redundant. However, Glenn L. Jepsen, 'Selection, "orthogenesis", and the fossil record', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 93 (December 1949), pp. 479-500, gives a large choice of quotations from Romanes' contemporaries dating from c.1880 onwards, all of them either rejecting natural selection or reducing it to a minor contributory role. So far as I am aware, no case using the documentary evidence can be made against Romanes' assessment.

6 Letter to Gray of 30 December 1883. Ethel Romanes, Life and Letters of George John Romanes, p. 154.

7 Letter to Darwin of 23 November 1859. Francis Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (hereafter Life and Letters), Vol. 2, p. 231.

8 Howard E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity..., p. 35.

9 Cyril Dean Darlington, 'The Origin of Darwinism', Scientific American, vol. 200 (May 1959), p. 61.

10 Samuel Butler, Ernest Pontilex, or The Way of All Flesh, ed. Daniel F. Howard, p. 180.

11 Alvar Ellegard, Darwin and the General Reader: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859-1872, pp.65-6.

12 Alfred Russel Wallace, The World of Life: A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose, p. 295.

13 William Thomson, 'On the age of the sun's heat', Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 5 (March 1862), p. 390.

14 William Thomson, 'On geological time', in his Popular Lectures and addresses, 2nd ed, Vol. 2, p. 64. This paper was first given as a lecture on 27 February 1868.

15 William Thomson, 'On the sun's heat', in ibid., Vol. 1, p. 397. This paper was first given as a lecture on 21 January 1887.

16 William Thomson, 'The age of the earth as an abode fitted for life', Science, vol. 9 (12 May 1899), pp. 665 ff. It has been several times suggested -- for instance, by Loren Corey Eiseley in Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It -- that Thomson's somewhat fundamentalist Christian persuasions made him push hard for the lowest figure just compatible with the physical evidence. But no one, not even Huxley, voiced any such suspicion at the time. Surely Huxley at least would have found the temptation to do so irresistible, if he had thought it could be made to stick. One recalls how he dealt with Mivart's citation of Jesuit authorities: by going straight to the original Latin sources and showing how dishonest Mivart's use of them had been. In fact, Thomson's fame made it difficult to question the accuracy of his calculation, though his conclusion could be, and was, denied.

17 These phrases are taken from letters to Alfred Russel Wallace of 14 April 1869 and 12 July 1871. James Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1, pp. 242, 268.

18 Letter to Victor Carus of 4 May 1869: Life and Letters, Vol. 3, p. 109.

19 Origin, IX:219.l:e. Throughout this book all references to The Origin of Species are to the superb and indispensable variorum text edited by Morse Peckham (1959). Roman numerals indicate chapters, arabic numbers the editor's convention for displaying successive textual changes. The last letter is a code for the edition being cited: "a-f" represent the six editions published in Darwin's lifetime.

20 T.H. Huxley, 'Geological reform' in his Collected Essays, Vol. 8, p. 329 (my italics). This was originally Huxley's presidential address to the Geological Society of London in 1869.

21 William Thomson, 'Of geological dynamics', in his Popular Lectures and Addresses, 2nd edn, Vol. 2, pp. 89-90.

22 Letter to LyeIl of 12 [March 1863: so dated by Francis Darwin]: Life and Letters, Vol. 3, p. 14.

23 Conway Zirkle, Evolution, Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene, p. 128.

24 Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2nd edn revised, Vol. 2, p. 318.

25 Asa Gray, 'Natural selection not inconsistent with natural theology', in his Darwiniana: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism, ed. A. Hunter Dupree, pp. 121-2. This essay first appeared in Atlantic Monthly in 1860.

26 Letter of 22 March, dated to 1860 by Francis Darwin: Life and Letters, Vol. 2, p. 312.

27 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed, p. 304.