As may be supposed, “Evolution, Old and New,” met with a very unfavourable reception at the hands of many of its reviewers. The _Saturday Review_ was furious. “When a writer,” it exclaimed, “who has not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr. Darwin has given years, is not content to air his own crude though clever fallacies, but assumes to criticise Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster looking over a boy’s theme, it is difficult not to take him more seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert speculator who takes all his facts at secondhand.” {36} The lady or gentleman who writes in such a strain as this should not be too hard upon others whom she or he may consider to write like schoolmasters. It is true I have travelled—not much, but still as much as many others, and have endeavoured to keep my eyes open to the facts before me; but I cannot think that I made any reference to my travels in “Evolution, Old and New.” I did not quite see what that had to do with the matter. A man may get to know a good deal without ever going beyond the four-mile radius from Charing Cross. Much less did I imply that Mr. Darwin was pert: pert is one of the last words that can be applied to Mr. Darwin. Nor, again, had I blamed him for taking his facts at secondhand; no one is to be blamed for this, provided he takes well-established facts and acknowledges his sources. Mr. Darwin has generally gone to good sources. The ground of complaint against him is that he muddied the water after he had drawn it, and tacitly claimed to be the rightful owner of the spring, on the score of the damage he had effected. Notwithstanding, however, the generally hostile, or more or less contemptuous, reception which “Evolution, Old and New,” met with, there were some reviews—as, for example, those in the _Field_, {37a} the _Daily Chronicle_, {37b} the _Athenæum_, {37c} the _Journal of Science_, {37d} the _British Journal of Homæopathy_, {37e} the _Daily News_, {37f} the _Popular Science Review_ {37g}—which were all I could expect or wish. Chapter IV The manner in which Mr. Darwin met “Evolution, Old and New.” BY far the most important notice of “Evolution, Old and New,” was that taken by Mr. Darwin himself; for I can hardly be mistaken in believing that Dr. Krause’s article would have been allowed to repose unaltered in the pages of the well-known German scientific journal, _Kosmos_, unless something had happened to make Mr. Darwin feel that his reticence concerning his grandfather must now be ended.