Another element in the success of the book was its moderate size;
and this I owe to the appearance of Mr. Wallace's essay; had I
published on the scale in which I began to write in 1856, the
book would have been four or five times as large as the 'Origin,'
and very few would have had the patience to read it.
I gained much by my delay in publishing from about 1839, when the
theory was clearly conceived, to 1859; and I lost nothing by it,
for I cared very little whether men attributed most originality
to me or Wallace; and his essay no doubt aided in the reception
of the theory. I was forestalled in only one important point,
which my vanity has always made me regret, namely, the
explanation by means of the Glacial period of the presence of the
same species of plants and of some few animals on distant
mountain summits and in the arctic regions. This view pleased me
so much that I wrote it out in extenso, and I believe that it was
read by Hooker some years before E. Forbes published his
celebrated memoir ('Geolog. Survey Mem.,' 1846.) on the subject.
In the very few points in which we differed, I still think that I
was in the right. I have never, of course, alluded in print to
my having independently worked out this view.
Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction when I was at work
on the 'Origin,' as the explanation of the wide difference in
many classes between the embryo and the adult animal, and of the
close resemblance of the embryos within the same class.
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