On the Origin of Species the second edition, Darwin added an epigraph from Joseph Butler affirming that God could work through scientific laws as much as through miracles, in a nod to the religious concerns of his oldest friends. The "Introduction" establishes Darwin's credentials as a naturalist and author, then refers to John Herschel's letter suggesting that the origin of species "would be found to be a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process": WHEN on board HMS "Beagle", as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present
Reactions to On the Origin of Species of Selection". Darwin now worked on an "abstract" trimmed from his "Natural Selection" manuscript. The publisher John Murray agreed the title as "On the Origin of Species through Natural Selection" and the book went on sale to the trade on 22 November 1859. The stock of 1,250 copies was oversubscribed, and Darwin, still at Ilkley spa town, began corrections for a second edition. The novelist Charles Kingsley, a Christian socialist country rector, sent him a letter of praise: "It awes me...if you be right I must give up much that I have believed", it was "just as noble a conception