My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

LYELL AND DARWIN 221manners, his fund of quiet humour, and his intenselove and extensive knowledge of natural science.His great liberality of thought and wide generalinterests were also attractive to me ; and althoughwhen he had once arrived at a definite conclusion heheld by it very tenaciously until a considerable bodyof well-ascertained facts could be adduced against it,yet he was always willing to listen to the argumentsof his opponents, and to give them careful andrepeated consideration.In 1867, when a new edition of the "Principlesof Geology" was in progress, I had much correspondenceand many talks with Sir Charles, chieflyon questions relating to distribution and dispersal, inwhich he, like myself, was greatly interested. Hewas by nature so exceedingly cautious and conservative,and always gave such great weight to difficultiesthat occurred to himself or that were put forth byothers, that it was not easy to satisfy him on anynovel view upon which two opinions existed or werepossible. We used often to discuss these variouspoints, but in any case that seemed to him importanthe usually preferred to write to me, stating his objections,sometimes at great length, and asking me togive my views.In the following year, when I was living at Hurstpierpoint,I wrote a letter to Sir Charles on Darwin'snew theory of "Pangenesis," a passage from whichI will quote, because the disproof of it, which Ithought would not be given, was not long in coming,and, with the more satisfactory theory of Weismann,led me to change my opinion entirely. I wrote(February 20, 1868): "I am reading Darwin's book('Animals and Plants under Domestication'), andhave read the ' Pangenesis ' chapter first, for I could