possibly be given him zoologically. But at the same time, if my theory is
true, that while the animals which surrounded him have been undergoing
modification in all parts of their bodies to a generic or even family
degree of difference, he has been changing almost wholly in the brain and
head--then in geological antiquity the SPECIES man may be as old as many
mammalian families, and the origin of the FAMILY man may date back to a
period when some of the ORDERS first originated.

As to the theory of Natural Selection itself, I shall always maintain it to
be actually yours and yours only. You had worked it out in details I had
never thought of, years before I had a ray of light on the subject, and my
paper would never have convinced anybody or been noticed as more than an
ingenious speculation, whereas your book has revolutionised the study of
Natural History, and carried away captive the best men of the present age.
All the merit I claim is the having been the means of inducing you to write
and publish at once. I may possibly some day go a little more into this
subject (of Man), and if I do will accept the kind offer of your notes.

I am now, however, beginning to write the "Narrative of my Travels," which
will occupy me a long time, as I hate writing narrative, and after Bates'
brilliant success rather fear to fail.

I shall introduce a few chapters on Geographical Distribution and other
such topics. Sir C. Lyell, while agreeing with my main argument on Man,
thinks I am wrong in wanting to put him back into Miocene times, and thinks
I do not appreciate the immense interval even to the later Pliocene. But I
still maintain my view, which in fact is a logical result of my theory; for
if man originated in later Pliocene, when almost all mammalia were of
closely allied species to those now living, and many even identical, then
man has not been stationary in bodily structure while animals have been