As I am not aware that this preposterous suggestion has ever been publicly disproved, and since therefore some readers of the journal in question may have been misled by it, I have collected much evidence, which proves that the principle of natural selection was only absorbed with the very greatest difficulty, and that the words used in describing it for a long time entirely failed to inform even eminent scientific men of the essential characteristics of the theory itself, and certainly failed most signally to convince them. Conviction came very gradually as the theory was slowly understood and was seen to offer an intelligible explanation of an immense and ever-increasing number of facts. I will now bring together quotations from Darwin’s letters in 1859 and 1860, showing how soon he came to realise the difficulty with which natural selection was understood, and to feel that he might have been more successful with some other title. In 1859 he wrote to Dr. W. B. Carpenter--“I have found the most extraordinary difficulty in making even able men understand at what I was driving.” The remaining quotations are all taken from letters written in 1860. By the middle of this year, when he was feeling oppressed by hostile reviews and unfair and ignorant criticisms (“I am getting wearied at the storm of hostile reviews, and hardly any useful”), he often alludes to the failure of opponents to understand his theory. Thus, in a letter to Hooker (June 5th), he says:-- “This review, however, and Harvey’s letter have convinced me that I must be a very bad explainer. Neither really understand what I mean by Natural Selection.... I hope to God you will be more successful than I have been in making people understand your meaning.” He says almost the same thing in a letter to Lyell (June 6th):-- “... I am beginning to despair of ever making the majority understand my notions.... I must be a very bad explainer. I hope to Heaven that you will succeed better. Several reviews and several letters have shown me too clearly how little I am understood. I suppose ‘Natural Selection’ was a bad term; ... I can only hope by reiterated explanations finally to make the matter clearer.” Writing to Asa Gray, he says:-- “... I have had a letter of fourteen folio pages from Harvey against my book, with some ingenious and new remarks; but it is an extraordinary fact that he does not understand at all what I mean by Natural Selection.” Later on, he again wrote to Lyell:--