Reactions to On the Origin of Species is also right". The "Saturday Review" reported that "The controversy excited by the appearance of Darwin's remarkable work on the "Origin of Species" has passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street." The older generation of Darwin's tutors were rather negative, and later in May he told his cousin Fox that "the attacks have been falling thick & heavy on my now case-hardened hide.— Sedgwick & Clarke opened regular battery on me lately at Cambridge Phil. Soc. & dear old Henslow defended me in grand style, saying that my investigations were perfectly
On the Origin of Species disperse across oceans to colonise distant islands. By 1856, his theory was much more sophisticated, with a mass of supporting evidence. In his autobiography, Darwin said he had "gained much by my delay in publishing from about 1839, when the theory was clearly conceived, to 1859; and I lost nothing by it". On the first page of his 1859 book he noted that, having begun work on the topic in 1837, he had drawn up "some short notes" after five years, had enlarged these into a sketch in 1844, and "from that period to the present day I have steadily