The Big Species Book

When did Darwin begin to write this "Big Species Book"? The Editors' Introduction says nothing about this. However, from many other sources, we may safely conjecture that Darwin began that sometime in May 1856, in all probability after Charles Lyell's visit to Darwin's house at Down.

Why did Lyell visit Darwin's house? Lyell read Wallace's paper "On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species" in Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Sept. 1855; Lyell was shocked by this paper, and opened his own notebook on the species problem. At the same time, since he knew that Darwin was long working on a similar problem, he decided to visit Darwin and to ask what Darwin was doing. In all probability, Lyell warned Darwin that Wallace might catch up with Darwin and possibly go ahead in a few years! Thus Darwin began to work on the Big Species Book, in order to work out his ideas on evolution, and to construct a book-length treatise on this subject.

For more on this, see the following paper.

Reference

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