From George Bentham   7 August 1878

My dear M^r Darwin

I see by the Times that the French Academy of Sciences has at last elected you a Corresponding Member¹ I do not write to congratulate you because you have only now got what had been so long your due and they have not yet placed you where you ought to have been long since in the higher rank of their Foreign Associates but yet I cannot help rejoicing that the irresistible strength of your theories has prevailed over the violent perhaps rather national than religious prejudices which have hitherto opposed their progress in France. They felt galled that you an Englishman by the sound basis upon which you had founded your conclusions should have succeeded where all the speculations of their own Lamarck had failed and the Académie gladly availed themselves of the exclamation attributed to Quatrefages Comment voulez vous que nous choisisions un homme qui dit que nous sommes descendus des singes!² and without enquiring whether you ever said any such thing they at once voted against you— Perhaps also they felt hurt at the prevailing idea that we believed that they inherited too much of the characteristics of these their supposed ancestors. However they seem now to have come to their senses and the only nation where (since the death of Agassiz)³ really scientific naturalists opposed themselves to your views has now succumbed and I cannot help congratulating you on what may more fairly be called their universal adoption

Yours very sincerely | George Bentham