However, both Hooker and Lyell had read his sketch a dozen years before, and it was arranged by them, not as considering claims of priority, which have too often been occasion of unworthy wrangling, but in the "interests of science generally," that an abstract of Darwin's manuscript should be read with Wallace's paper at a meeting of the Linnæan Society on the 1st of July, 1858. The full title of the joint communication was On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties, and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Selection. Sir Joseph Hooker, describing the gathering, says that "the interest excited was intense, but the subject was too novel and too ominous for the old school to enter the lists before armouring. After the meeting it was talked over with bated breath. Lyell's approval, and perhaps, in a small way mine, as his lieutenant in the affair, rather overawed the Fellows, who would otherwise have flown out against the doctrine. We had, too, the vantage ground of being familiar with the authors and their theme." Nothing can deprive Mr. Wallace of the honour due to him as the co-originator of the theory, which, regarded in its application to the origin, history, and destiny of man, involves the most momentous changes in belief, and there may be fitly quoted here his own modest and, doubtless, correct, assessment of limitations which in no wise invalidate his high claims. In the Preface to his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870), Mr. Wallace says the book will prove that he both saw at the time the value and scope of the law which he had discovered, and has since been able to apply to some purpose in a few original lines of investigation. "But," he adds, "here my claims cease. I have felt all my life, and I still feel, the most sincere satisfaction that Mr. Darwin had been at work long before me, and that it was not left for me to attempt to write the Origin of Species. I have long since measured my own strength, and know full well that it would be quite unequal to that task. Far abler men than myself may confess that they have not that untiring patience in accumulating, and that wonderful skill in using, large masses of facts of the most varied kind--that wide and accurate physiological knowledge--that acuteness in devising and skill in carrying out experiments, and that admirable style of composition at once clear, persuasive, and judicial--qualities which, in their harmonious combination, mark out Mr. Darwin as the man, perhaps of all men now living, best fitted for the great work he has undertaken and accomplished."