When, then, the Athenaeum reviewed "Life and Habit" (January 26,
1878), I took the opportunity to write to that paper, calling
attention to Professor Hering's lecture, and also to the passage just
quoted from Dr. Erasmus Darwin. The editor kindly inserted my letter
in his issue of February 9, 1878. I felt that I had now done all in
the way of acknowledgment to Professor Hering which it was, for the
time, in my power to do.

I again took up Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species," this time, I admit,
in a spirit of scepticism. I read his "brief but imperfect" sketch
of the progress of opinion on the origin of species, and turned to
each one of the writers he had mentioned. First, I read all the
parts of the "Zoonomia" that were not purely medical, and was
astonished to find that, as Dr. Krause has since said in his essay on
Erasmus Darwin, "HE WAS THE FIRST WHO PROPOSED AND PERSISTENTLY
CARRIED OUT A WELL-ROUNDED THEORY WITH REGARD TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE LIVING WORLD" {27} (italics in original).

This is undoubtedly the case, and I was surprised at finding
Professor Huxley say concerning this very eminent man that he could
"hardly be said to have made any real advance upon his predecessors."
Still more was I surprised at remembering that, in the first edition
of the "Origin of Species," Dr. Erasmus Darwin had never been so much
as named; while in the "brief but imperfect" sketch he was dismissed
with a line of half-contemptuous patronage, as though the mingled
tribute of admiration and curiosity which attaches to scientific
prophecies, as distinguished from discoveries, was the utmost he was
entitled to. "It is curious," says Mr. Darwin innocently, in the
middle of a note in the smallest possible type, "how largely my