A few days later a final blow was struck in the battle over the ape question. He writes on October 15 how he has written a letter to the "Medical Times"--his last word on the subject, summing up in most emphatic terms:--] I have written the letter with the greatest care, and there is nothing coarse or violent in it. But it shall put an end to all the humbug that has been going on...Rolleston will come out with his letter in the same number, and the smash will be awful, but most thoroughly merited. [These several pieces of work, struck out at different times in response to various impulses, were now combined and re-shaped into "Man's Place in Nature," the first book which was published by him. Thus he writes to Sir Charles Lyell on May 5, 1862:--] Of course I shall be delighted to discuss anything with you [Referring to the address on "Geological Contemporaneity" delivered in 1862 at the Geological Society.], and the more so as I mean to put the whole question before the world in another shape in my little book, whose title is announced as "Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature." I have written the first two essays, the second containing the substance of my Edinburgh Lecture. I recollect you once asked me for something to quote on the Man question, so if you want anything in that way the MS. is at your service. [Lyell looked over the proofs, and the following letters are in reply to his criticisms:--] Ardrishaig, Loch Fyne, August 17, 1862. My dear Sir Charles, I take advantage of my first quiet day to reply to your letter of the 9th; and in the first place let me thank you very much for your critical remarks, as I shall find them of great service. With regard to such matters as verbal mistakes, you must recollect that the greater part of the proof was wholly uncorrected. But the reader might certainly do his work better. I do not think you will find room to complain of any want of distinctness in my definition of Owen's position touching the Hippocampus question. I mean to give the whole history of the business in a note, so that the paraphrase of Sir Philip Egerton's line "To which Huxley replies that Owen he lies," shall be unmistakable. I will take care about the Cheiroptera, and I will look at Lamarck again. But I doubt if I shall improve my estimate of the latter. The notion of common descent was not his--still less that of modification by variation--and he was as far as De Maillet from seeing his way to any vera causa by which varieties might be intensified into species.