I am intensely interested in what we shall come to, and never broach the subject to him.

I finished the geological evidence chapters yesterday; they are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such forcible objections as you still hold them to be.

I would say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imperfection of the Geological Record, though no language can be stronger or arguments fairer and sounder against it.

Of course I am influenced by Botany, and the conviction that we have not in a fossilised condition a fraction of the plants that have existed, and that not a fraction of those we have are recognisable specifically.

I never saw so clearly put the fact that it is not intermediates between existing species we want, but between these and the unknown tertium quid.
You certainly make a hobby of Natural Selection, and probably ride it too hard; that is a necessity of your case.