creations." So that he has no confidence that these birds were produced by
"processes he knows not what!" To what miserable inconsistencies and
rubbish this truckling to opposite opinions leads the great generaliser!
(119/4. In the "Historical Sketch," which forms part of the later editions
of the "Origin," Mr. Darwin made use of Owen's Leeds Address in the manner
sketched above. See "Origin," Edition VI., page xvii.)

Farewell: I heartily rejoice in the clear merit of this number. I hope
Mrs. Huxley goes on well. Etty keeps much the same, but has not got up to
the same pitch as when you were here. Farewell.


LETTER 120. TO JAMES LAMONT.
Down, February 25th [1861].

I am extremely much obliged for your very kind present of your beautiful
work, "Seasons with the Sea-Horses;" and I have no doubt that I shall find
much interesting from so careful and acute an observer as yourself.
(120/1. "Seasons with the Sea-Horses; or, Sporting Adventures in the
Northern Seas." London, 1861. Mr. Lamont (loc. cit., page 273) writes:
"The polar bear seems to me to be nothing more than a variety of the bears
inhabiting Northern Europe, Asia, and America; and it surely requires no
very great stretch of the imagination to suppose that this variety was
originally created, not as we see him now, but by individuals of Ursus
arctos in Siberia, who, finding their means of subsistence running short,
and pressed by hunger, ventured on the ice and caught some seals. These
individuals would find that they could make a subsistence in this way, and
would take up their residence on the shore and gradually take to a life on
the ice...Then it stands to reason that those individuals who might happen
to be palest in colour would have the best chance of succeeding in