On The Tendency of Species To Form Varieties; and On The Perpetuation of Varieties and Species By - The Reading

The Reading

The papers were read to the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858, by the Secretary John Joseph Bennett. Neither author was present. Darwin was attending the funeral of his son, and Wallace was still in Borneo. The meeting was chaired by the President of the society, Thomas Bell, who had written up the description of Darwin's reptile specimens from the Beagle expedition.

About thirty were present, including two unnamed guests from overseas, with many there to hear an obituary notice for the former president and botanist Robert Brown given by Lyell. Wallace's natural history agent Samuel Stevens happened to be present, while Darwin's friends there included William Benjamin Carpenter and the geologist William Henry Fitton. Amongst the others, Daniel Oliver and Arthur Henfry would later support evolution, while Cuthbert Collingwood became an opponent. George Bentham was persuaded by Hooker to step down so that the Darwin and Wallace papers were first on the agenda, followed by six other papers on botanical and zoological topics. Bell had introduced discussions at the end of meetings, but there was no discussion of natural selection, perhaps because of the amount of business that had been dealt with, or possibly due to polite reluctance to speak out against a theory which the eminent Lyell and Hooker were supporting. Bentham noted that the audience appeared fatigued. Hooker later said there was "no semblance of a discussion", though "it was talked over with bated breath" at tea afterwards, and in his reminiscences many years later thought "the subject too ominous for the old school to enter the lists before armouring." Although Bell apparently disapproved, the Vice-President promptly removed all references to immutability from his own paper which was awaiting publication.

Darwin wrote to Wallace to explain what had occurred, enclosing a letter which Hooker wrote at Darwin's request. His next action was to get his family away from the danger of infection, both himself and Emma exhausted by sickening fear about the safety of their children. The day after the funeral they moved to his sister-in-law's in Sussex, then on to Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. At first they stayed in the King's Hotel, Shanklin, and on 30 July Darwin began writing an "abstract" of his book on Natural Selection, planning a short paper in response to Hooker's urging to publish a scientific paper in the Linnean journal. They next rented a villa in Sandown and Darwin pressed on, with the facts he felt necessary to support his "abstract" expanding far beyond the thirty pages Hooker had originally suggested.

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