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 included evidence that he had gathered on the "Beagle" expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation. Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy