read heaps of agricultural and horticultural book, and have never ceased collecting facts. At last gleams of light have come, and I am almost convinced. (quite contrary to the opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable… I think I have found out (here's presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends. You will now groan, and think to yourself, 'on what a man I have been wasting my time and writing to.' I should, five years ago, have thought so. …[1]
This was the first time Darwin mentioned the subject to Hooker—or for that matter, to anyone outside of his own household. But the great botanist neither groaned nor regretted the time he had spent in writing; instead, he accepted the earliest possible invitation to meet Darwin at his brother's house in London. After that Hooker frequently came to Down, sometimes alone, and sometimes in the company of other naturalists. After the work of evolution became well established, visits became matters of scientific inquiry as well as friendship.
"It was an established rule," says Hooker, "that he every day pumped me, as he called it, for half an hour or so after breakfast in his study, when he first brought out a heap of slips with questions botanical, geographical, etc., for me to answer, and concluded by telling me of the progress he had made in his
- ↑ Here we have a conflict in dates. It is plain that Darwin did not trouble to decide definitely at what time he did begin to believe in evolution, or to admit its possibility, and the various dates depend upon the varying viewpoints from which he considered his attitude at the time he wrote.
