Reactions to On the Origin of Species man to be envious of a naturalist like myself, immeasurably his inferior!" Darwin's had estimated that erosion of the Weald would take 300 million years, but in the second edition of "On the Origin of Species" published on 7 January 1860 he accepted that it would be safer to allow 150 million to 200 million years. Geologists knew the earth was ancient, but had felt unable to put realistic figures on the duration of past geological changes. Darwin's book provided a new impetus to quantifying geological time. His most prominent critic, John Phillips, had investigated how temperatures increased with depth
On the Origin of Species Haeckel would convince Huxley that comparative anatomy and palaeontology could be used to reconstruct evolutionary genealogies. The leading naturalist in Britain was the anatomist Richard Owen, an idealist who had shifted to the view in the 1850s that the history of life was the gradual unfolding of a divine plan. Owen's review of the "Origin" in the April 1860 "Edinburgh Review" bitterly attacked Huxley, Hooker and Darwin, but also signalled acceptance of a kind of evolution as a teleological plan in a continuous "ordained becoming", with new species appearing by natural birth. Others that rejected natural selection, but supported "creation