When _Kosmos_ came I turned to the end of the article to see how the sentence about mental anachronism and weakness of thought looked in German. I found nothing of the kind, the original article ended with some innocent rhyming doggerel about somebody going on and exploring something with eagle eye; but ten lines from the end I found a sentence which corresponded with one six pages from the end of the English translation. After this there could be little doubt that the whole of these last six English pages were spurious matter. What little doubt remained was afterwards removed by my finding that they had no place in any part of the genuine article. I looked for the passage about Coleridge’s using the word “Darwinising”; it was not to be found in the German. I looked for the piece I had quoted from Buffon about rudimentary organs; but there was nothing of it, nor indeed any reference to Buffon. It was plain, therefore, that the article which Mr. Darwin had given was not the one he professed to be giving. I read Mr. Darwin’s preface over again to see whether he left himself any loophole. There was not a chink or cranny through which escape was possible. The only inference that could be drawn was either that some one had imposed upon Mr. Darwin, or that Mr. Darwin, although it was not possible to suppose him ignorant of the interpolations that had been made, nor of the obvious purpose of the concluding sentence, had nevertheless palmed off an article which had been added to and made to attack “Evolution, Old and New,” as though it were the original article which appeared before that book was written. I could not and would not believe that Mr. Darwin had condescended to this. Nevertheless, I saw it was necessary to sift the whole matter, and began to compare the German and the English articles paragraph by paragraph. On the first page I found a passage omitted from the English, which with great labour I managed to get through, and can now translate as follows:— “Alexander Von Humboldt used to take pleasure in recounting how powerfully Forster’s pictures of the South Sea Islands and St. Pierre’s illustrations of Nature had provoked his ardour for travel and influenced his career as a scientific investigator. How much more impressively must the works of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, with their reiterated foreshadowing of a more lofty interpretation of Nature, have affected his grandson, who in his youth assuredly approached them with the devotion due to the works of a renowned poet.” {43}