Reactions to On the Origin of Species Owen's pre-eminence. To him, new species appeared at birth, not through natural selection. As well as attacking Darwin's "disciples" Hooker and Huxley, he thought that the book symbolised the sort of "abuse of science to which a neighbouring nation, some seventy years since, owed its temporary degradation." Darwin had Huxley and Hooker staying with him when he read it, and he wrote telling Lyell that it was "extremely malignant, clever & I fear will be very damaging. He is atrociously severe on Huxley's lecture, & very bitter against Hooker. So we three enjoyed it together: not that I really enjoyed
On the Origin of Species only the last chapter still to write. In September the main title still included ""An essay on the origin of species and varieties"", but Darwin now proposed dropping "varieties". With Murray's persuasion, the title was eventually agreed as "On the Origin of Species", with the title page adding "by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". In this extended title (and elsewhere in the book) Darwin used the biological term ""races"" interchangeably with ""varieties"", meaning varieties within a species. He used the term broadly, and as well as discussions of "the several