To Charles Lyell   18 May [1860]

My dear Lyell

I send letter from Asa Gray to show how hotly battle rages there.— Also one from Wallace, very just in his remarks, though too laudatory & too modest, & how admirably free from envy or jealousy.— He must be a good fellow. Perhaps I will enclose letter from Thomson of Calcutta, not that it is much, but Hooker thinks so highly of him.—¹

Many thanks for your interesting letter of 15^th.²    What interesting facts are turning up about man!—   With respect to Rabbit & Hares; Lewis takes the account from Isid. G. St. Hilaire:³ I have not yet looked at original account; such good men are concerned that I think there can be no mistake. Yet I shall not be satisfied till I hear how he got his first hybrids.— There is an old variety called Hare-rabbit— A good naturalist once assured me he had found hybrid pheasant-fowls perfectly fertile int se; after a time I found out that he had bought the first cross, & this supposed cross was the variety called “pheasant-fowl” & which does resemble the pheasant considerably.— Some time when you have done with it I sh^d much like to see Schaafhausen pamphlet on natural selection.—⁴

I have ordered Canadian Mag;⁵ but if I cannot get it, will borrow yours.—

Henslow informs me that Sedgwick & then Prof. Clarke made a regular & savage onslaught on my Book lately at Cambridge Phil. Soc. but Henslow seems to have defended me well, & maintained that the subject was a quite legitimate one for investigation.—⁶ Since then Phillips has given lecture at Cambridge on same subject, but treated it very fairly.⁷ How splendidly Asa Gray is fighting the battle.⁸ The effect on me of these multiplied attacks is simply to show me that the subject is worth fighting for, & assuredly I will do my best. But ill-health & multifarious interrutions make my progress excessively slow.—   I can very plainly see, as I lately told Hooker, that my Book would have been & be a mere flash in the pan, were it not for you, Hooker & a few others.—   I hope all the attacks make you keep up your courage; & courage you assuredly will require.

Etty to day has been a shade better.⁹ Tomorrow or Sunday makes 3 weeks.—   It has been dreadfully harassing to us. She has not suffered much, except the pitiable weariness of so long a fever.—

My dear Lyell | Yours affect | C. Darwin

I have read some of Godron.—¹⁰ He strikes me as rather common-place, which surprises me as he wrote capital paper on means of Distribution of plants.—¹¹ He puts the old case well that mere physical conditions do very little in modifying organic forms.—

I have just received 8 Pages of verses, anonymous, apparently well done, quizzing & lauding my Book & me, but I have hardly read them. They have been copied so I cannot recognise hand-writing.—¹²

I forget whether I told you that there was very good & long quiz in Manchester newspaper some time ago, showing that I had proved that “might was right” was the universal law of nature.—¹³