My  dear  Lyell, — I  thank  you  cordially  for  giving  me  so
much  of  your  valuable  time  in  writing  me  the  long  letter  of
3d,  and  still  longer  of  4th.  I  wrote  a  line  with  the  missing
proof-sheet  to  Scarborough.  I  have  adopted  most  thankfully
all  your  minor  corrections  in  the  last  chapter,  and  the  greater
ones  as  far  as  I  could  with  little  trouble.  I  damped  the
opening  passage  about  the  eye  (in  my  bigger  work  I  show
the  gradations  in  structure  of  the  eye)  by  putting  merely
"complex  organs."     But  you  are  a  pretty  Lord  Chancellor  to


1859.]  LYELL'S  CRITICISMS.  5

tell  the  barrister  on  one  side  how  best  to  win  the  cause !
The  omission  of  "living"  before  eminent  naturalists  was  a
dreadful  blunder.
Madeira  and  Bermuda  Birds  not  peculiar, — You  are  right,
there  is  a  screw  out  here;  I  thought  no  one  would  have
detected  it ;  I  blundered  in  omitting  a  discussion,  which  I
have  written  out  in  full.  But  once  for  all,  let  me  say  as  an
excuse,  that  it  was  most  difficult  to  decide  what  to  omit.
