“Talking of ‘natural selection’; if I had to commence _de novo_, I would have used ‘natural preservation.’ For I find men like Harvey of Dublin cannot understand me, though he has read the book twice. Dr. Gray of the British Museum remarked to me that, ‘_selection_ was obviously impossible with plants! No one could tell him how it could be possible!’ And he may now add that the author did not attempt it to him!” And still later he wrote asking Lyell’s advice as to additions to a new edition of the “Origin,” saying:--“I would also put a note to ‘Natural Selection,’ and show how variously it has been misunderstood.” This note is to be found on page 63 of the sixth edition. In it he tells us that some writers have “even imagined that natural selection induces variability,” instead of merely preserving it; others that natural selection “implies conscious choice in the animals which become modified”; others that it is set up “as an active power or Deity.” In writing (December) to Murray about a new edition of the “Origin,” he alludes to the “many corrections, or rather additions, which I have made in hopes of making my many rather stupid reviewers at least understand what is meant.” He seems to have retained a very vivid recollection of the difficulty with which his theory was understood at first; thus he tells us in his “Autobiography”:-- “I tried once or twice to explain to able men what I meant by Natural Selection, but signally failed.” Why the term “natural selection” was chosen by Darwin is very clearly shown in the three following quotations from letters to distinguished scientific men, which were probably written in answer to attacks or criticisms on this very point. He writes to Lyell in 1859, “Why I like the term is that it is constantly used in all works on breeding.” Writing to H. G. Bronn in 1860, he explains his motives with great clearness and force:-- “Several scientific men have thought the term ‘Natural Selection’ good, because its meaning is _not_ obvious, and each man could not put on it his own interpretation, and because it at once connects variation under domestication and nature.... Man has altered, and thus improved the English race-horse by _selecting_ successive fleeter individuals; and I believe, owing to the struggle for existence, that similar _slight_ variations in a wild horse, _if advantageous to it_, would be _selected_ or _preserved_ by nature; hence Natural Selection.” In 1866 he wrote to Wallace, comparing the term with that which we owe to Herbert Spencer:--