"I have been interrupted in my regular work in preparing a new edition of the 'Origin,' which has cost me much labour, and which I hope I have considerably improved in two or three important points. I always thought individual differences more important than single variations, but now I have come to the conclusion that they are of paramount importance, and in this I believe I agree with you. Fleeming Jenkin's arguments have convinced me." This somewhat obscure sentence was explained, February 2, in another letter to Mr. Wallace:-- "I must have expressed myself atrociously; I meant to say exactly the reverse of what you have understood. F. Jenkin argued in the 'North British Review' against single variations ever being perpetuated, and has convinced me, though not in quite so broad a manner as here put. I always thought individual differences more important; but I was blind and thought that single variations might be preserved much oftener than I now see is possible or probable. I mentioned this in my former note merely because I believed that you had come to a similar conclusion, and I like much to be in accord with you. I believe I was mainly deceived by single variations offering such simple illustrations, as when man selects." The late Mr. Fleeming Jenkin's review, on the 'Origin of Species,' was published in the 'North British Review' for June 1867. It is not a little remarkable that the criticisms, which my father, as I believe, felt to be the most valuable ever made on his views should have come, not from a professed naturalist but from a Professor of Engineering. It is impossible to give in a short compass an account of Fleeming Jenkin's argument. My father's copy of the paper (ripped out of the volume as usual, and tied with a bit of string) is annotated in pencil in many places. I may quote one passage opposite which my father has written "good sneers"--but it should be remembered that he used the word "sneer" in rather a special sense, not as necessarily implying a feeling of bitterness in the critic, but rather in the sense of "banter." Speaking of the 'true believer,' Fleeming Jenkin says, page 293:-- "He can invent trains of ancestors of whose existence there is no evidence; he can marshal hosts of equally imaginary foes; he can call up continents, floods, and peculiar atmospheres; he can dry up oceans, split islands, and parcel out eternity at will; surely with these advantages he must be a dull fellow if he cannot scheme some series of animals and circumstances explaining our assumed difficulty quite naturally. Feeling the difficulty of dealing with adversaries who command so huge a domain of fancy, we will abandon these arguments, and trust to those which at least cannot be assailed by mere efforts of imagination."