Mivart's greatest error, the confounding "individual variations" with
"minute or imperceptible variations," is well exposed by C. Wright, and
that part I should like to see reprinted; but I always thought you laid
too much stress on the slowness of the action of Natural Selection owing
to the smallness and rarity of favourable variations. In your chapter on
Natural Selection the expressions, "extremely slight modifications,"
"every variation even the slightest," "every grade of constitutional
difference," occur, and these have led to errors such as Mivart's, I say
all this because I feel sure that Mivart would be the last to
intentionally misrepresent you, and he has told me that he was sorry the
word "infinitesimal," as applied to variations used by Natural
Selection, got into his book, and that he would alter it, as no doubt he
has done, in his second edition.
Some of Mivart's strongest points--the eye and ear, for instance--are
unnoticed in the review. You will, of course, reply to these. His
statement of the "missing link" argument is also forcible, and has, I
have no doubt, much weight with the public.
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