I
was forestalled in only one important point, which my vanity has always
made me regret, namely, the explanation, by means of the Glacial period,
of the presence of the same species of plants and of some few animals on
distant mountain summits and in the arctic regions. This view pleased me
so much that I wrote it out _in extenso_, and I believe that it was read
by Hooker some years before Edward Forbes published his celebrated
memoir on the subject. In the very few points in which we differed I
still think that I was in the right. I have never, of course, alluded in
print to my having independently worked out this view.
Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction, when I was at work on the
_Origin_, as the explanation of the wide difference in many classes
between the embryo and the adult animal, and of the close resemblance of
the embryos within the same class. No notice of this point was taken, as
far as I remember, in the early reviews of the _Origin_, and I recollect
expressing my surprise on this head in a letter to Asa Gray.
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