Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - Darwin and the Theory of Evolution.djvu/16

 Rh of writing a very brief abstract of my theory in pencil in 35 pages; and this was enlarged during the summer of 1844 into one of 230 pages, which I had fairly copied out and still possess.

"But at this time I overlooked one problem of great importance; and it is astonishing to me, except on the principle of Columbus and his egg, how I could have overlooked it and its solution. This problem is the tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in character as they become modified. That they have diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed under genera, genera under families, families under sub-orders and so forth; and I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me; and this was long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature."

It was at about this time that Darwin began to feel real confidence in the results of his reading and experimentation. In January of 1844, before writing out the second statement of his ideas, he wrote to Hooker:

… I have now been, ever since my return, engaged in a very presumptuous work, and I know no one individual who will not say a foolish one. I was so struck with the distribution of the Galapagos organisms, etc., and with the character of the American fossil mammifers, etc., that I determined to collect, blindly, every sort of fact, which could bear in any way on what are species. I have