I suppose Mr. Darwin cut out the five more my’s that disappeared in 1872 because he had not yet fully recovered from his scare, and allowed nine to remain in order to cover his retreat, and tacitly say that he had not done anything and knew nothing whatever about it. Practically, indeed, he had not retreated, and must have been well aware that he was only retreating technically; for he must have known that the absence of acknowledgment to any earlier writers in the body of his work, and the presence of the many passages in which every word conveyed the impression that the writer claimed descent with modification, amounted to a claim as much when the actual word “my” had been taken out as while it was allowed to stand. We took Mr. Darwin at his own estimate because we could not for a moment suppose that a man of means, position, and education,—one, moreover, who was nothing if he was not unself-seeking—could play such a trick upon us while pretending to take us into his confidence; hence the almost universal belief on the part of the public, of which Professors Haeckel and Ray Lankester and Mr. Grant Allen alike complain—namely, that Mr. Darwin is the originator of the theory of descent, and that his variations are mainly functional. Men of science must not be surprised if the readiness with which we responded to Mr. Darwin’s appeal to our confidence is succeeded by a proportionate resentment when the peculiar shabbiness of his action becomes more generally understood. For myself, I know not which most to wonder at—the meanness of the writer himself, or the greatness of the service that, in spite of that meanness, he unquestionably rendered.