public, it seems truly remarkable how so many of them could have failed to
see their right road sooner. How could Sir C. Lyell, for instance, for
thirty years read, write, and think, on the subject of species AND THEIR
SUCCESSION, and yet constantly look down the wrong road!

A quarter of a century ago, you and I must have been in something like the
same state of mind on the main question, but you were able to see and work
out the quo modo of the succession, the all-important thing, while I failed
to grasp it. I send by this post a little controversial pamphlet of old
date--Combe and Scott. If you will take the trouble to glance at the
passages scored on the margin, you will see that, a quarter of a century
ago, I was also one of the few who then doubted the absolute distinctness
of species, and special creations of them. Yet I, like the rest, failed to
detect the quo modo which was reserved for your penetration to DISCOVER,
and your discernment to APPLY.

You answered my query about the hiatus between Satyrus and Homo as was
expected. The obvious explanation really never occurred to me till some
months after I had read the papers in the 'Linnean Proceedings.' The first
species of Fere-homo ("Almost-man.") would soon make direct and
exterminating war upon his Infra-homo cousins. The gap would thus be made,
and then go on increasing, into the present enormous and still widening
hiatus. But how greatly this, with your chronology of animal life, will
shock the ideas of many men!

Very sincerely,
HEWETT C. WATSON.


J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN.